The average in-state tuition nationwide for students attending four-year public colleges increased 36 percent from 2000-01 through 2004-05, according to the College Board, while consumer prices over all rose about 11 percent.
John D. Wiley, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that during the years after World War II, America built the world's greatest system of public higher education.
"We're now in the process of dismantling all that," Dr. Wiley said.
[S]aid Katharine C. Lyall, an economist and president emeritus of the University of Wisconsin. "America is rapidly privatizing its public colleges and universities, whose mission used to be to serve the public good. But if private donors and corporations are providing much of a university's budget, then they will set the agenda, perhaps in ways the public likes and perhaps not. Public control is slipping away."
At stake are institutions that carry out much of the country's public-interest research and educate nearly 80 percent of all college students, and whose scientific and technological innovation has been crucial to America's economic dominance.
"Privatization may be a good description of what is going on at our flagship campuses, but not at our four-years," [David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, the nation's largest association of universities and colleges] said. "They cannot survive without public funding."
Source: "At Public Universities, Warnings of Privatization" By SAM DILLON - NY Times - October 16, 2005
Since 2000:
- Credit Card defaults (people not making minimum payments) : Up 55%
- Home Mortgage Foreclosures: Up 45%
- Personal Bankruptcies: Up 35%
Source: NOW on PBS - Elizabeth Warren - Professor, Harvard University, Author "The Two-Income Trap"
Households are on pace to spend an average of $4,500 on energy this year, up about $500 from last year and $900 more than in 2003, according to Global Insight, a research firm.
Households are now spending about $550 billion a year on energy, up by about $150 billion since the start of last year, according to Global Insight. Over the course of an entire year, the increase would be equal to almost 2 percent of overall consumer spending.
Energy costs are likely to be a particular burden on low- and middle-income households, whose income growth has barely matched inflation over the last few years. Wealthier households have done better, government data show, and have helped keep economic growth healthy with spending on second homes, new vehicles and the like.
In 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it cannot be the basis of a sound energy policy." Also that year, Ari Fleischer, then Mr. Bush's press secretary, responded to a question about reducing American energy consumption by saying "that's a big no."
"The president believes that it's an American way of life," Mr. Fleischer said.
Households that use natural gas will pay an average $1,130 to heat their homes this winter, an increase of almost $400, according to federal government estimates. The price of natural gas in futures markets has more than doubled since 2000 and is six times what it was throughout the 1990's.
Source: "To Conserve Gas, President Calls for Less Driving" By DAVID LEONHARDT, JAD MOUAWAD and DAVID E. SANGER - NY Times - September 27, 2005
1.3 Million: Number of new jobs created between the first quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004.
26%: Portion of those jobs that have gone to noncitizens, who are ineligible to vote.
Source: Time Magazine - Notebook/Numbers - 6/28/04
The April and May [2004] employment figures indicate that more than 532,000 jobs were created. When one factors March, it brings the total of new jobs to nearly one million. But of the 280,000 jobs created in April, over half were in part-time and temporary work that offered no health benefits. The May job figures show a similar trend. Even more striking: while the administration talks about economic growth and jobs created, unemployment remains unchanged at 5.6 percent.
There are more people unable to find work than four years ago. One of the major reasons for unemployment stagnation during the April/May period is that more than one million individuals were removed from the unemployment rolls. These individuals have been removed not because they have found work; rather they have exhausted the amount of time the government considers them to be "unemployed."
The growth in wages fell dramatically over the past four years. In 2000, median weekly wages grew by 4.9 percent. This fell to a mere 2.0 percent in 2003. Adjusted for inflation, wages fell slightly in real terms in 2003 for the first time since 1996. For those who have found work, the recovery has had less impact in an economy where profits have soared, yet families' benefits are nullified by the rising costs of housing, education, and medical care -- all of which increased at double-digit rates.
Source: "Are you better off? - Bush 'recovery' claims warrant critical eye" by Byron Williams - byronspeaks.com 06.28.04
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, reported recently that 43 million people are living in low-income working families with children. Other government data show the number of people living below the official poverty line grew by more than 3.5 million from 2000 to 2002, to 34.6 million.
"The reach of the economic slowdown has really pulled in a lot of folks who never expected to be poor," said Stacy Dean, director of food-stamp policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Last year, in the sparsely populated, nine-county region of southeastern Ohio, 9.1 millions pounds of food were handed out [at food pantries] -- that's up from 3.9 million pounds in 2000. In the past three years, the number of households served by food banks has more than tripled, notes Second Harvest of Southeast Ohio.
Even as the national economy shows fitful statistical signs of recovery, the data do not take into account that declining numbers of employers offer health insurance and many new jobs pay the minimum wage, $5.15 an hour.
Source: Chicago Tribune (via Dallas Morning News) "More Working Families Toe The Poverty Line" by Tim Jones - 5/9/04
According to the U.S. Labor Department, the number of factory jobs in America has dropped by 2.6 million since the last recession began — roughly the same length as President Bush's term in office. It dropped 11,000 more just last month [Jan 2004].
Source: Now with Bill Moyers - PBS - 2/6/04
On Friday [3/5/04] we learned [from Labor Department statistics] that 400,000 more people dropped out of the labor force in February [2004]. That dragged down the labor force participation rate to 65.9 percent, a 15-year low.
Factories handed out 3,000 more pink slips last month. [Feb 2004].
The net number of nonfarm jobs created in February [2004] was reported as 21,000. …If you incorporate the downward revisions to December [2003] and January [2004]…(those months now show 23,000 jobs lost), [the result is] a 2,000 job deficit in three months.
And the average time spent looking for a job hit five months -- a 20-year high.
Even worse -- at 1.6 percent, wage growth has fallen behind inflation.
Source: Dallas Morning News -- "Behind jobless numbers, the picture looks even worse" by Danielle DiMartino -- 3/8/04
Republicans claim that the President has a limited amount of control over the national economy.
The current economic slump can be dated almost exactly to the time when the Bush administration took office. If Al Gore had taken office in 2000 and the economy would have tanked like it has (which it probably wouldn't have), the Republicans would be crawling all over themselves to attribute control over the national economy to him.
George W. Bush may not be single handedly responsible for this disastrous turn in the economy, but if he isn't then he's sure as heck bad luck!
Excuse me for remembering, but wasn't it Bush and Cheney who campaigned three years ago on a claim that, By Gollies, they were hard-nosed corporate executives and fiscal conservatives who could run government like a business?
Well... while they've been in charge, our nation's business has gone $455 billion in the hole – a radical reversal of fortune from the $236 billion surplus that George and Dick inherited! They've piled up by far the biggest federal deficit on record – and next year promises an even bigger loss, perhaps reaching $500 billion.
Source: JimHightower.com -- "BUSH'S BUDGET HAS A BIG BOO-BOO" - 7/30/2003
Source: NY Times - 10/16/05