American Society of Pediatrics

Dear President Bollinger, Dr. Halliday, and Dr. Redlener,

We, the undersigned members of the Columbia community, are disturbed to learn that the University has a contract with the Customs and Border Protection, the arm of the US Dept. of Homeland Security that is on the front line of this Administration’s policy of “zero tolerance” and detention of migrants and asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border.

The contract is with the Earth Institute’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness to develop for the CBP “a standardized, but basic health-screening tool to help determine whether a child might need urgent medical attention” and other medical protocols.

We beg to differ with the rationale for this contract, that “the federal agencies responsible for apprehending and assuming custody of people crossing the borders illegally are beyond overwhelmed” and that “much-maligned (often unfairly) Border Patrol agents, with essentially no medical training whatsoever, are doing a thankless job.” (ibid)

The crisis at the border and in CBP detention facilities is entirely of this administration’s making. It is the desired outcome of a deliberate policy to inflict bodily and psychic harm on asylum seekers, adults and children alike, under the guise of “deterrence.” CBP continues to separate children and infants from their parents. It confiscates migrants’ clothing, toothbrushes, and medicines when they are placed in detention. Migrants have inadequate access to water and food. The camps are kept at 55 degrees and lights are kept on 24 hours a day. Migrants must sleep on concrete floors; many cannot even do this, as the cells are so crowded as to be standing-room only. According to some observers, the horrific conditions in these facilities meet the legal definition of torture.

Some may argue that it is possible to do a small good in the context of a large evil. Perhaps contributing professional services to the CBP to alleviate suffering is an appropriate response to this crisis. We do not believe it is possible to provide such services under the aegis of CBP because the administration in general, and CBP in particular, has created this crisis in the first place. Well-intentioned actions clash with the agency’s mandate to implement an inhumane policy and its toxic culture. Worse, such actions may legitimate the CBP, which has no interest in attending to the medical needs of migrants. Legal advocates (including Columbia law professor Elora Mukherjee) have gone to court to gain access for independent doctors and a public health expert at the CBP facilities along the border. Notably, John Sandler, the acting director of the CBP, who reportedly reached out to Columbia to develop a screening tool, resigned on June 25 amidst outcry over conditions in detention camps. DHS's inspector general report (July 2) corroborate findings of independent monitors.

There are many ways for us to positively assist migrants in this crisis. Columbia faculty and students have provided independent translation, legal, and medical services at the border and elsewhere for migrants and asylum seekers. Columbia Law School's immigration clinic and Medical School's asylum clinic are two institutional venues that have responded to the current crisis. But we believe the University should have nothing to do with Customs and Border Patrol. Contracting with CBP is at odds with Columbia’s ethics, which led the University to divest from private prison and detention contractors. Regardless of good intentions, the CBP contract is a stain on our conscience and reputation as an institution that upholds human rights and ethical practices. We cannot work for concentration camps. We demand that Columbia cancel its contract with the CBP.

Sincerely,

1	Mae Ngai	Faculty	History
2	Nara Milanich	Faculty	History, Barnard
3	Shamus Khan	Faculty	Chair, Sociology
4	Dhananjay Jagannathan	Faculty	Department of Philosophy
5	Anupama Rao	Faculty	History, Barnard College and   MESAAS (CU)
6	Michael Harris	Faculty	Mathematics
7	Karen Van Dyck	Faculty	Classics Department
8	Susan Bernofsky	Faculty	School of the Arts
9	Michael Thaddeus	Faculty	Department of Mathematics
10	Nico Baumbach	Faculty	Associate Professor, Film/School   of Arts
11	Jane M Spinak	Faculty	Columbia Law School
12	Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi	Faculty	Barnard College Department of   Architecture
13	Naor Ben-Yehoyada	Faculty	Anthropology
14	Shelly Silver	Faculty	Visual Arts, School of the Arts
15		Faculty	English and Comparative Literature
16	Natasha Lightfoot	Faculty	History
17	Elsa Stamatopoulou	Faculty	Institute for the Study of Human   Rights
18	Francine Cournos, MD	Faculty	Mailman School of Public Health
19	Marianne Hirsch	Faculty	English and Comparative Literature
20	Gauri Viswanathan	Faculty	English and Comparative Literature
21	Jessica Collins	Faculty	Philosophy
22	J.C. Salyer	Faculty	Department of Anthropology &   Director of the Human Rights Program, Barnard
23	Herb Sloan	Faculty	Professor Emeritus, Department of   History, Barnard
24	Brent Hayes Edwards	Faculty	Department of English and   Comparative Literature
25	Todd Gitlin	Faculty	Journalism and Sociology
26	Gil Anidjar	Faculty	Religion / MESAAS
27		Faculty	Dept. of Germanic Languages, ICLS
28	Courtney Bender	Faculty	Department of Religion
29	Katharina Pistor	Faculty	Law School
30	Jack Halberstam	Faculty	English and IRWGS
32	Joseph Slaughter	Faculty	English and Comparative   Literatures, Institute for the Study of Human Rights
33		Faculty	Barnard College
34	Kristina Milnor	Faculty	Department of Classics, Barnard   College
35	Rosalind Morris	Faculty	Department of Anthropology
36	Vanessa Agard-Jones	Faculty	Anthropology
37	Reinhold Martin	Faculty	Architecture
38	Rhiannon Stephens	Faculty	History, A&S
39	Sheldon Pollock	Faculty	MESAAS
40	Lila Abu-Lughod	Faculty	Anthropology and IRWGS, Columbia
41	James Schamus	Faculty	School of the Arts
42	Janet Jakobsen	Faculty	Women's, Gender and Sexuality   Studies, Barnard College
43	Deborah Paredez	Faculty	School of the Arts Writing Program
44	Claudia Breger	Faculty	Germanic Lang and Lit
45	Richard Pena	Faculty	School of the Arts/Film
47	Susan Riemer Sacks	Faculty	Psychology Dept., Barnard College
48	Eric Foner	Faculty	History (emeritus)
49	Sharon Schwartz	Faculty	MSPH
50	Nick Bartlett	Faculty	Assistant Professor, AMEC, Barnard   College
51	Martha Howell	Faculty	Department of History
52	Merlin Chowkwanyun	Faculty	Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman   School of Public Health
54	Robert G. O'Meally	Faculty	English Department, African   American Studies Department, Center for Jazz Studies
55	Nadia Abu El-Haj	Faculty	Anthropology
56	Najam Haider	Faculty	Barnard College
57	Christy Thornton	Alumni	BC 02, SIPA 03, Assistant   Professor Johns Hopkins
58	Paige West	Faculty	Claire Tow Professor of   Anthropology; Director, Center for Study of Social Difference
59	Ralph Ghoche	Faculty	Department of Architecture,   Barnard College
60	Jean Howard	Faculty	Arts and Sciences
61	Branden W Joseph	Faculty	Art HIstory
62	Molly Murray	Faculty	Department of English and   Comparative Literature
63	Manisha Sinha	Alumni	University of Connecticut
64	Helen Weng, PhD	Alumni	CC '04
65	Sybill Chen	Student	History
66	Angela Aidala	Faculty	SMS/ MSPH
67	Andrew Liu	Alumni	GSAS, History
68	Julian Brave NoiseCat	Alumni	Columbia College
69	Audra Simpson	Faculty	Department of Anthropology
70	Lydia H. Liu	Faculty	East Asian Languages &   Cultures/Institute for Comparative Literature & Society
71	Marie Myung-Ok Lee	Faculty	School of the Arts + Center for   the Study of Race & Ethnicity (CSER)
72	Carly Goodman, Ph.D.	Alumni
73	Armando Lozano	Alumni	CC, LAW
74	Patricia Dailey	Faculty	English and Comp Lit
75	Daniel Morales	Alumni	History Department
76	Tovah Klein, PhD	Faculty	Director, Toddler Center, Barnard   College
77	John C Stoner	Alumni	History, University of Pittsburgh
78	Glenn Adler	Alumni	GSAS/Political Science
79	Ellie Hisama	Faculty	Department of Music
80	Timothy Patrick McCarthy	Alumni	PhD, History, IRAAS
81	Anne Goodwin	Non-Columbia affiliate	Affordable Power and Justice
82	Katrine Jensen	Staff	Council for European Studies
83	Steven Sherman	Alumni	Columbia College '86
84	Farina Mir	Alumni	GSAS 2002
85		Alumni	School of international and public   affairs
86	Michael Bernhard	Alumni	PhD 1988, Ehrlich Professor of   Political Science University of Florida
87	Michael Pollak	Alumni	GSAS Sociology
88	Anna Danziger Halperin	Alumni	GSAS '18
89	Melissa Morris	Alumni	GSAS
90	Pablo Piccato	Faculty	History
91	Michelle Philpo-Denney	Non-Columbia affiliate	Horrified U.S. Citizen
92	Deborah Eisenberg	Faculty	School of the Arts
93	Margaret E. Keck	Alumni	GSAS Political Science
94	Ian Shin	Alumni	GSAS '16
95	leah dworkin	Alumni	school of the arts
96	Lisa Brunet, Ph.D.	Alumni	GSAS
97	Premilla Nadasen	Faculty	History
98	Alexander Alberro	Faculty	Art History
99	Kurt Mettenheim	Alumni	Political Science - SIPA
100	Emmanuelle Saada	Faculty	Professor of French & Carnoy   Family Program Chair of Contemporary Civilization
101	Elizabeth Hutchinson	Faculty	Art History and Archaeology
102	Tom Kalin	Faculty	Professor, Columbia University   School of the Arts, Film
103	Deborah Valenze	Faculty	Barnard College
104	Judith Byfield	Alumni	GSAS (History) 1993
105	Penny Von Eschen	Alumni	William R. Kennan, Jr. Professor   of American Studies /History, University of Virginia
106	An Kint	Alumni	GSAS
107	Monika Nalepa	Faculty	Political Science, The University   of Chicago
108	Ana M Ochoa	Faculty	Department of Music
109	Rebecca Kobrin	Faculty	History Department
110	Graciela Montaldo	Faculty	LAIC, Columbia
111	Illan Gonen	Faculty	MESAAS
112	Brinkley Messick	Faculty	Anthropology
113	D. Max Moerman	Faculty	Professor & Chair, Department   of Asian & Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard; CC '86
114	Cailin Hong	Student	History, GSAS
115	Charry Karamanoukian	Faculty	MESAAS
116	Lien-Hang Nguyen	Faculty	History
117	Thai Jones	Staff	RBML
118		Alumni	GSAS Political Science
119	Nan A Rothschild	Faculty	Anthropology
120	Steve Askin	Alumni	Columbia Business School, MBA 1993
121	Andor Skotnes	Faculty	Former Acting and Assistant   Director, Columbia Oral History Research Office
122	Mark Von Hagen	Faculty	History
124	Mahmood Mamdani	Faculty	Herbert Lehman Professor of   Government and Professor of Anthropology
125	Alice gorton	Student	History, GSAS
126	Stephanie McCurry	Faculty	R Gordon Hoxie Professor of   History
127	Sahar Bostock	Student	History, GSAS
128	Jane Leftwich Curry	Alumni	Department of Political Science
129	Celia E. Naylor	Faculty	History and Africana Studies,   Barnard College
130	Alice Nash	Alumni	History Ph.D.1997
131	Joseph Howley	Faculty	Department of Classics
132	Mariana Katz	Student	PhD Student, History Department
133	J.T. Roane	Alumni	GSAS
134	Bailey yellen	Student	GSAS
135	Jennifer Wenzel	Faculty	Dept. of English & Comparative   Literature; MESAAS
136	Mary Gordon	Faculty	Barnard College
137	Darcy Krasne	Faculty	Classics Department
138	Genesis Garfio	Alumni	CC17
139		Alumni	Mailman School of Public Health
140	Jeffrey Fagan	Faculty	Law School
141	Jennifer Lee	Faculty	Sociology
142	Andrew Lipman	Faculty	History, Barnard College
143	Cora Cervantes	Alumni	GS 16’
144	Kendall Thomas	Faculty	Law School
145	Carol Mason	Faculty	Zuckerman Institute
146	Claudio Lomnitz	Faculty	Anthropology
147	Rebecca Vaadia	Student	Neurobiology and Behavior program
148	Matt Sandler	Staff	Center for the Study of Ethnicity   and Race
149	Karina Pantoja	Alumni	Columbia College
150	Sayantani DasGupta	Faculty	Graduate Program in Narrative   Medicine
151	Lucia Saldivar	Alumni	Barnard College, Class of 2017
152	Juan Gonzalez	Alumni	CC
153	Denise Frutos	Alumni	Psychology
154	Christia Mercer	Faculty	Philosophy
155	Lorenzo Bradford	Alumni	Columbia College ‘17
156	Silvia Bernardi	Faculty	Psychiatry
157	Karl Jacoby	Faculty	History Department
158	Daniela Rodriguez	Alumni
159	Alejandro P Desince	Alumni	CC ‘18
160	Elizabeth Castelli	Faculty	Religion, Barnard College
161	Romeo Guzman	Alumni	History, PhD
162	Amanda Hardin	Student	History
163	Elizabeth Heintges	Student	Dept. of Classics
164	Eder Gaona-Macedo	Alumni	SIPA
165	Eliza Zingesser	Faculty	French
166	Jennifer Scribner	Student	Neurobiology & Behavior
167	Jane E Turk	Alumni	Communications, GSAS
168	Dr. Benjamin Weiss	Alumni	Columbia College '05
169	Maria Victoria Murillo	Faculty	GSAS & SIPA
170		Faculty	Women’s, Gender and Sexuality   Studies, Barnard College
171	Rebecca E Karl	Alumni	Professor, History Department, NYU
172	Matthew Haugen	Staff	Libraries
173	Hong Deng Gao	Student	History, Graduate School of Arts   and Sciences
174	Jenni Ingram	Alumni	School of social work
176	Jonathan Beller	Faculty	Eng. & WGSS, Barnard College
177	Evan Jewell	Alumni	GSAS, Classical Studies
178	Rebecca Arteaga	Alumni	Columbia College
179	Gabriel Solis	Student	History PhD program
180	Nabiha Nuruzzaman	Alumni	Mailman School of Public Health
181	Georgia A. Mickey	Alumni	Business 1997, Arts & Sciences   2004
182	Harlan D. Chambers	Student	Graduate School of Arts and   Sciences, EALAC
183	Nataly Shahaf	Student	EALAC
184	Shao-Hung Teng	Alumni	Film and Media Studies MA
185	Adrienne Minh-Châu Lê	Student	GSAS History (PhD)
186	Nancy Kricorian	Alumni	School of the Arts
187	Ansley T. Erickson	Faculty	Teachers College and Department of   History
188	Lisa Tiersten	Faculty	Barnard College, History   Department
189	Cooper Lynn	Alumni	Institute of Comparative   Literature
190	Dorothea von Mücke	Faculty	Gebhard Professor of German   Language & Literature, Dept of Germanic Languages
191	Daniel Friedrich	Faculty	Teachers College, Dept. Of   Curriculum and Teaching
192	Rozena Raja	Student	Teachers College
193	Dinesh Rathakrishnan	Alumni	Mailman School of Public Health
194	Jennifer Lena	Faculty	Teachers College
195	Yasemin Akcaguner	Student	GSAS History
196	Sophie Schweiger	Student	Department of Germanic Languages
197	Helen Zhao	Student	Philosophy, GSAS
198	Rhonesha Blaché	Student	Teachers College
199	Zainab Bahrani	Faculty	Art History and Archaeology
200	Karen Seeley	Faculty	Anthropology
201	Carla Stockton	Alumni	G.S. and School of the Arts
202	Adam Kosto	Faculty	History
203	howard greenberg	Alumni	school of the arts
204	Vera A Nazarian	Alumni	School of Arts and Science
205	Robert Fuller	Student	Teachers College
206	Jordan Corson	Student	Teachers College
207	Jessica Reyna	Student	Barnard College ‘16; Columbia   School of Social Work ‘22
208	Silja Weber	Faculty	Germanic Languages
209	Lynne Guillot	Alumni	School of the Arts
210	Neil Ziolkowski	Student	Germanic Languages
211	Marc Van De Mieroop	Faculty	History department
212	Shezza Abboushi Dallal	Alumni	Barnard College
213	Rober Jack Gross	Alumni	Institute for Comparative   Literature and Society
214	Inderpal Grewal	Non-Columbia affiliate	Yale University
215	Ann Douglas	Faculty	English and Comparative Literature   Department
216	Nick Juravich	Alumni	Columbia GSAS (History)
217	Wendy Chavkin	Faculty	Mailman
218	Mary Beth Terry	Faculty	Epidemiology
219	Rick Moody	Alumni	School of the Arts
220	Frank Guridy	Faculty	History & African American   African Diaspora Studies
221		Faculty	Teachers College
222	Jacqueline Siapno	Non-Columbia affiliate	Independent Researcher and Former   Acting First Lady, East Timor (Timor Leste)
223	Rosana Koundakjian	Alumni	GSAS ‘90
224	Casey N. Blake	Faculty	History and American Studies
225	Dialika Sall	Student	GSAS
226	Vahe Habeshian	Alumni	GS
227	Rebecca Jordan-Young	Faculty	WGSS, Barnard College
228	Donna Medel	Alumni	Columbia College
229	Karen Ramirez	Alumni	Columbia College
230	Robert Tiburzi	Alumni	College
231	Bruce Robbins	Faculty	English and Comparative Literature
232	Ira Katznelson	Faculty	Political Science and History
233	María Fernanda Martínez	Alumni	Columbia College
234	Ayten Gundogdu	Faculty	Political Science, Barnard College
235	Victoria de Grazia	Faculty	History Department
236	Gregory Mann	Faculty	History
237	E. Mara Green	Faculty	Anthropology
238	Macayla Donegan	Student	Neuroscience
239	Mabel O. Wilson	Faculty	GSAPP/GSAS
240	Meredith Gamer	Faculty	Department of Art History and   Archaeology
241		Faculty	MESAAS
242	Christopher Hoffman	Student	Graduate School of Arts and   Sciences
243	Jessica Bulman-Pozen	Faculty	Law School
244	Kadambari Baxi	Faculty	Architecture, Barnard College
245	Samantha Van Doran	Student	Graduate School of Arts and   Sciences
246	Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez	Student	History
247	Bette Gordon	Faculty	School of the Arts/Film
248		Faculty	Psychology, Barnard College
249	Jessica Collins	Faculty	Associate Professor, Department of   Philosophy
250	Gwendolyn Wright	Faculty	Graduate School of Architecture,   Planning and Preservation
251	Madeleine Zelin	Faculty	EALAC and History
252	Mary Nolan	Alumni	GSAS History
253	Alan Stewart	Faculty	English and Comparative Literature
254	Kimi Traube	Alumni	CC, SOA
255	Kim Fader	Staff	Epidemiology, Mailman School of   Public Health
256	Sonam Singh	Faculty	Barnard College
257		Non-Columbia affiliate	Ball State University
258	Michael Perles	Alumni	GSAPP, 2016
259	Mohamed Kouta	Student	GSAS
260	Will Owen	Student	GSAS
261	Áine McLaughlin	Non-Columbia affiliate	University of Maryland student
262	Jonathan Slater	Student	GSAS
263	Stefan Andriopoulos	Faculty	Germanic Languages
264	Alexander Alberro	Faculty	Art History
265	Chloe Vaughn	Student	Germanic Languages (GSAS)
266	Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak	Faculty	University Professor, Columbia   University

John Warner describes the catastrophic cuts to the University of Alaska as a swan song. The term suggests the end of a model, with a new model to follow. It's easy to be pessimistic about this.  Two economists from the UA-Fairbanks campus do a good job of telling Washington Post readers about the cuts' fiscally-unnecessary destruction. But they sound resigned.

We may default to the idea that an anti-government era is dying, but the new one is helpless to be born.  In fact, the new era is here, but we aren't giving it the help it needs to emerge.

That help includes recognizing that the 41 percent cut to the Alaska university system comes from a political script developed in the 1970s and perfected in the 1980s.  The script is a classic: the candidate buys votes by promising to give away public money.  Two 1970s and 1980s innovations were especially important.  First was the Reaganite claim that the real corruption was to let the public sector keep its money (government was waste, fraud, and abuse) while tax cuts (or Permanent Fund Dividend --PFD- increases, Alaska's version), restored money to its rightful owners.  Second was the construction of an implementation machinery-- a skilled, disciplined cadre of unknown technocratic operatives whose faceless previous deeds would not be subject to empirical assessment and accountability.  The combination of free money and operational obscurity will keep working, regardless of the opposing ideas of  Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and a generation of debt and precarity sufferers if the general public--starting with academics--doesn't get involved in public budgeting.

I know less about the Alaska governor than I do about his newly-imported budget director, but it looks to me like maiming the state universities is the way Dunleavy can set himself up as the next Scott Walker by competing in a national Republican party gang initiation that requires the dead bodies of a few public services run by the liberal professions (teachers and caregivers bad; police good).  The hunter-teacher-principal with the Native wife is now working with a Koch brothers organization (see also a PR Watch report) and has gotten himself the national headlines that he couldn't have without causing a lot of pain.  He's made efforts to suppress public debate.  Still, he can't do it by himself--he needs at least one trained operative with unwavering ideological commitment who can seize governmental control points to awe the voters with overwhelming force.

That operative is Donna Arduin, pictured with Gov Dunleavy above.  He brought her to a state who had never heard of her before this spring--video of her first budget hearing starts with the committee chair cajoling her repeatedly to say a couple of things about who she is because nobody knows.  She finally said she has worked for seven governors in six states.  What she didn't add is that they were all far-right Republicans who were devoted to advancing their political careers by breaking government and giving its money to supporters. She started in Michican in the early 1990s with John Engler, who accelerated that state's downward slide, and worked for Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in Florida.  She was then dispatched to California, where she helped a governor whom we all remember well.

She more recently worked as "rent-an-axe" for government hater Gov. Bruce Rauner in Illinois, who sowed chaos in part by holding the higher ed budget hostage for months at a time. 

Arduin was a central player in implementing Arnold Schwarzenegger's version of the far-right fiscal playbook.  The starting point is always to create a crisis. First, as noted above, claim current tax levels reflect waste, fraud, and abuse--an unjust taking of personal property like the Vehicle Licensing Fee in California or a reduced PFD distribution in Alaska--and promise big cuts.  Arnold waved brooms and knives to prove this point.  Second, repeat a fairy tale in which the same or better services--the legit ones--can be had for less tax money, along with more prosperity and jobs. This was the task of the "Laffer Curve" of Ronald Reagan fame, in which lower tax rates allegedly produce more business and therefore higher overall tax receipts, so the cuts pay for themselves and all the government stuff you want is still in place.  (Republicans used this line to demobilize opposition to their trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and the wealthy in 2017.) Third, once you've won election with these paired claims, follow through with the large tax cut you promised, creating a sugar high in the base while also blowing up the budget deficit.  Fourth, use the big deficit to make huge destructive cuts, ideally big enough to change the agencies permanently.

The playbook can be modified while keeping its basic structure. Alaska is a great test case.  It is the third smallest state by population, and for several years has been getting smaller.  It has an extraction economy that depends on the price of oil and gas, and these prices are down from their previous highs.  The state government is dependent on extraction taxes and fees for 85% of its revenues, and now has a deficit that needs to be covered.  It sounds like a good opportunity to drown some government.

Unlike other states, however, Alaska has a Permanent Fund that normally gives a couple of thousand dollars annually to every Alaska resident. In normal years, it partially offsets an elevated cost of living. This fund is currently valued at over $65 billion.  The previous governor cut the divided to use the rest to cover the state deficit.  Dunleavy could continue this policy until oil prices rise again.  He could raise taxes (the current total per capita AK load is about a half of Washington state's, and there is no sales, income, or property tax, so there's some headroom). Dunleavy wears his love for Alaska on his sleeve, so he could use also use PFD to address Alaska's college completion problem (it is 49th of 50 states, page 6), double Native college attendance rates, and similar things that might help move the state away from natural resource dependence.  Dunleavy could have ambitious goals and he has many fiscal options. In the real world, there are always many options. How, then, to get a crisis that can eliminate all options except for massive, destructive cuts?

With the Playbook. First, say the government has had its hand in the people's pockets: promise to restore the Permanent Fund Dividend to its statutory amount-and top up the shortfalls from previous years.  A local TV station made a handy graphic:

Second, say using a third of the PFD reserve in one year (with no new taxes) won't hurt a thing-- health care, schools, universities, ferries, law enforcement, etc.  At Reporting From Alaska, Dermot Cole has a good list of all the cuts Dunleavy promised not to make.  When people respond, well if you're going to spend less on government you'll have to cut something, invoke efficiencies and consolidations--or just make some bullshit up, like Dunleavy did.  He claimed that the state is spending $200 million on jobs that are "funded but not filled," and that there's thus $200 million is savings to be plucked from a tree. (He also trusted that voters are dumb or lazy enough to believe that the state cuts hundreds of checks every two weeks for jobs that don't have people in them.)  Third, once you're elected by promising voters free, painless money, give away public money while refusing to raise taxes.   Fourth, rather than admitting your plan was either dumb or evil, use the deficit to cut everything massively, particularly higher education.  Look familiar?

This is where Donna Arduin comes in.  She is a seasoned pro at seizing control over multiple agencies through a technical rhetoric of process optimization.  Her presentation began by announcing that she had centralized budget development in her office, which meant taking it away from the various state agencies who had long built and submitted their own budgets.  She didn't spell out the obvious implications; operating agencies lose control of their own budgeting, and their local knowledge is purged from the process. Having been in the state for a few weeks, Arduin captured the process and replaces its situated assumptions with her own.

Her assumptions are far-right boilerplate: the public sector is straight waste, all regulation hurts business, only the private sector creates value, government activity should be privatized, its services are for moochers.  One rare press investigation of her assumptions, by a newspaper in Saratoga, Florida, found that they invalidated a consultancy report's conclusions even in the eyes of the Republican politicians who had hired her.   Her goals are always the same, and her means entirely predictable.

I reported almost ten years ago on one of Arduin's impacts in California:

When Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor in 2003, in the middle of yet another three-year reduction in state higher education funding, his budget director, Donna Arduin, privately told university leaders that she would push for continued state funding cuts to force the University of California and the California State University to implement major hikes in tuition. Arduin got much of what she wanted. Partly inspired by fear, university leaders signed a “compact” with the Schwarzenegger administration that built in 7–10 percent annual tuition increases between 2005–06 and 2010–11. This meant that tuition would inevitably rise at two to three times the 3–4 percent increases targeted for state funds. 

Arduin was in California's Department of Finance for less than a year, but UCOP never fully recovered.  They got scared off talking about rebuilding public funding to restore or improve quality.  Now, after years of tuition freezes, they build state requests around promises to generate an extra 20,000 degrees or so per year for a decade, which will consume any new funds and more. The Arnold-Arduin shock doctrine has locked in privatization and stagnation.

Now it's deja vu all over again: "Alaska University System May ‘Never Recover’ From Governor’s Budget Cuts, Leaders Warn." Those leaders are right.

In the middle of various state chopping jobs, Arduin formed a consulting firm with curvemeister Laffer.  One of Laffer's main clients was the far-right Kansas governor Sam Brownbeck, who, following the script, promised that massive cuts in taxes and government would rocket the state economy into a new age of riches.  Laffer helped Kansas refute his own theory yet again.  Tax cuts did not stimulate business investment, job growth, and tax receipts.  They gave investors and businesses windfall revenues.  Along the way, the Brownbeck-Laffer crew raided state reserves to try to hide their failure. Brownback's Republican legislature finally reacted to the giant hole he blew in the budget by revolting against the model in 2017, after it was too late: Kansas will be digging itself out for years and years.  In June, to honor Laffer's lifetime achievement with wrecking governments, Donald Trump awarded him the Congressional Medal of Freedom.

The playbook is always the same.

How do the Charlie Browns stop running for the anti-tax football?

Through a few things:

--Remembering what happened to the ball last time.  This means history and journalism, in circulation.  The short AFL-CIO video I linked to is a good example of user-friendly critique.  There needs to be serious, consistent coverage of the actual results of hatchet-people like Arduin--of what they have actually wrought.  And when coverage does happen, people need actually to read it.  Reading articles will help people like this guy, who, living on an island, was surprised that Dunleavy cut the ferry system after promising not to cut the ferry system.   Dude, you seem to have missed the last fifty years of American politics. But one article can bring you up to speed.

--Massed theoretical assault on the stupid theory that government produces no value-- is a dead weight except for people that need handouts.  The stupid theory has all sorts of social and ethical problems--it is grounded in racism and sexism, for starters--and gross political bias.  But it also needs to be shown to be factually wrong, across the full range of cases, and those results need to be distributed.  In reality, public goods are the majority of value in a society, and make private production possible.  In Alaska, as elsewhere, public goods are the main, really the sole source of decolonized resource use, racial justice, sustainable environmental policies, and progress in human welfare.  Bankrupt far-right economics needs to be replaced with a completely different model.  The work is underway, but it needs to go faster.

--Confrontational, persistent political pressure on politicians like Dunleavy to stop lying.  His fiscal claims during the campaign were fraudulent. They should be described as such, in the same way that journalists can now write sentences like "Today Donald Trump falsely claimed that . . ." The big lovable bear of a man dodged and weaved and minimized and evaded and lied his way through the campaign.  He should have been pressed hard then.  He continues to lie about the non-effects of his cuts -- "we can't continue to be all things to all people," or "it will be tough for a while but we'll get through this."  Call him out.  Raise the political cost of lying to people's faces over and over.  Only then will it will happen less often.

--Progressives are also going to have to bite the bullet and fight for mass scale budget literacy.  Budgets are a dominant language of political life.  Public systems and choices are more complicated than they were in the heyday of the party system, and people's educations haven't caught up.  Nor have their desires to educate themselves about how public money makes things happen. Not knowing that Dunleavy's budget vetoes would wreck higher ed, ferries, some forms of health care, etc. is a form of entitlement.  Not guessing that his evasions meant cuts know is a kind of privilege.  You sometimes hear leftists patronizing people who can "follow the arithmetic."  Well we can stay dumb about budgets--and stay Charlie Brown.

But nobody has to.

UPDATE

On August 13, 2019, the governor of Alaska and University of Alaska officials announced a deal to reduce the budget cut by about half, and spread the cut over three years.  The University president made the mistake of calling this a "pivot to the positive," when it may well have been the cut Gov. Dunleavy wanted from the start.  The Board of Regents did lift their Declaration of Financial Exigency, which was excellent news for UA employees. Dermot Cole gets behind the news coverage: on August 16, he pointed out that, "There is no hint in the so-called compact that the regents have to follow Dunleavy’s orders, which is appropriate because the Alaska Constitution says the regents are not subservient to the governor."  He suggested that Dunleavy reduced the cut because of a growing recall campaign. 

 Cole concludes,

As soon as the state budget is signed, the university will be free from the Dunleavy blackmail plan and the regents should begin the task of seeking the funding level UA needs from the Legislature, ignoring the antics of a governor on the run from a recall. 

The Dunleavy blackmail attempt, if he decides to continue with it, will do nothing but boost the recall campaign.

I hope that is true. Other directly related posts are dated August 13th and September 18 

(reporting on internal University feuding that may break up the UA system in spite of the reduced budget cuts).

And you'll be shocked to learn that Donna Arduin has left the building.