Time to revive an old ZR analysis of U-M data manipulation. Read that along with with last week's ZR exclusive on U-M administrative growth, and yesterday's piece by Marisa Schultz of the Detroit News who writes here about the statewide wave of tuition increases.

And guess who's allegedly to blame again - anybody but the administrators at the schools. The legislature isn't appropriating enough of your money.

Hammered by six years of state appropriations reductions, U-M has taken considerable cost-cutting measures, from motion sensors that activate lights only when someone's in a classroom to reducing the number of deans in the College of Engineering, said U-M Provost Teresa Sullivan. "But finding additional things to cut is getting harder and harder."

In 1960, state funds comprised nearly 80 percent of U-M's budget; now that's 24 percent, and tuition is the largest stream of revenue, she said.

"We are in a situation in which our state appropriation has been under considerable pressure," Sullivan said.

Wait, there hasn't been "six years of state appropriations reductions" - there have been six years where legislative appropriations have stagnated or modestly increased. More importantly, that quote on the 1960 comparison of "relative % of legislative funding" is an extension of the fabulous lie first perpetrated by former president James Duderstadt in the mid-90s, when he pointed out that U-M's 1986-1996 "share" of state funding as a percentage of U-M's overall funding fell from 18% to 12%, and blamed the legislature for the "cut". Sullivan deserves credit for the novelty of expanding the time-frame to 1960 to increase the magnitude by a factor. Still, ZR debunked the original horrible twisting of statistics which applies today, pointing out that U-M averaged 17% growth in administration over the same time while the legislature gave 8% more over the time. That's twice the rate of inflation (quadruple for expenditures and other revenues including tuition increases and federal sources) - the legislature lived up to its end of the bargain, yet U-M blamed it on them in the bustling 90s and still uses the same old saw today.

Although the Detroit News writer is doing the best she can with the beat she's assigned, the problem is when you're forced to take the word of U-M officials you're in for some surprises.

"Time and time again we've made the cuts and we've done the reforms," said Regent S. Martin Taylor, noting U-M has slashed $120 million in costs in five years. "We've done those things and then we recognized that (in order) to keep Michigan great, we have to increase revenues."

Just last night State Senator John Pappageorge told a Rochester gathering a story. You go into your boss's office and ask for a $5,000 raise. After much discussion about your value and productivity, and the budget of the company, your boss gives you a $2,000 raise. You walk out of the office and tell your office-mates you just took a $3,000 pay cut.

In the University of Michigan shadow world of budgeting, an increase can be a cut. A look at the Provost's data reveals how words can be twisted - but ZR's favorite is when James Duderstadt tried to play the same trick in the mid-90s and ZR broke it down with this analysis showing that the decline was really an increase but decline relative only to outrageous 17% annual growth by U-M bureaucracy.

If U-M "cut $120 million" in expenses, it doesn't mean that it reduced its overall bureaucracy by that size. Either they cut a hypothetical $120 million that they might have spent in ideal circumstances, they cut something they were going to cut anyway or was at a natural end, they cut something but spent twice as much elsewhere, or any number of explanations. Regardless, I'd like to see the documentation of exactly what their cuts were, and methodology. And even if they saved a $120 million in future costs, its nearly a $3 billion dollar budget. Compare these explanations with last week's ZR statistical analysis of the last five years of U-M administrative growth.

Flip S. Martin Taylor's statement around. Instead of, "(in order) to keep Michigan great, we have to increase revenues," it should be "to keep Michigan great, we have to decrease costs." Does it really matter whether a student pays for his university education in tuition - or through his or her parents and future taxes. It's just a shell-game either way. The key is to reduce costs and provide better value. And with the salary analysis ZR has done, clearly that isn't happening.

Zarko Research again provides insight into the vaunted, but bloated, University of Michigan.

Like the ZR analysis of Michigan State University salary database trends over the last two years when it asked for a 9.6% tuition hike last week, ZR has been collecting U-M databases. An analysis of five year trend data provides a clear insight into why U-M tuition rates explode. There are 38,000 employees at U-M - and 3500 of them make more than 100K annually, a number itself that has an impressive growth rate.

The engorging is top-heavy - an outlandish growth rate among $100,000/year employees, percentage increases in the "Top 1000" by two measurements that are consistently in the 5% range (with a 7.5% average spike, and 20% total spending spike in 2001-2002, reflecting probably a "preparation" for bad times given the strong economy the previous year and the obvious signs of crisis down the road. But there has been no "crisis" for the purses and wallets of U-M bureaucrats, even as the Michigan economy has crashed. They keep churning out nickel increases while the Governor wants to appropriate extra pennies from the plebes to make up the difference.

Education is important. But out-of-check, unaccountable cost increases for top-level administrators do not guarantee any student a fair education. Check the tables yourselves. It's all there - or actually, its' all in Mary Sue Coleman's $600,000 (plus hidden benefits) salary. Imagine if that money went to students instead!

Here, and pasted below, I write about the ACLU amicus brief with the Michigan Supreme Court filed on Friday in favor of BAMN and against MCRI petitioners. In the link, I've attached full copies of the ACLU brief, press release, and a 2004 brief filed by the ACLU in Washington D.C. that has exactly the opposite legal argument as their current brief. Hence, the two faces of the ACLU.

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Two days ago, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), known recently for its defense of preferential policies in the University of Michigan admissions lawsuits but most historically appreciated for the wide-array of First Amendment defenses it has defended, filed an amicus brief against the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) and in support of the group named "By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)," claiming that the Court of Appeals should have allowed a deeper investigation into allegations of petitioner misrepresentation.

The hypocrisy of this position though is betrayed by the position the ACLU took in defense of petitioner First Amendment rights to expression in a lawsuit relating to a lottery petition circulated in 2004 in Washington D.C. They were right then, but showing their political colors now. I've included both briefs, side by side, for readers to make their own judgement. The D.C. lottery case brief is a powerfully written, exceptional argument that applies nearly word for word to the MCRI case.

To sum up the ACLU position in the 2004 D.C. Lottery case, the ACLU pointed out that petitioning was "core political speech" protected by the First Amendment and that the type of "misrepresentations" the D.C. Elections department were alleged had to due with determining which opinions, as opposed to facts, were "correct," and that such determinations would be impermissable under the First Amendment.

Of course, political speech is sometimes false or misleading—although it’s often hard to find two people who agree on just which political speech is misleading and why. For two current examples, note the debates over the accuracy vel non of the movie Fahrenheit 9/11,23 and over the accuracy vel non of the publications and advertisements by “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” about Senator Kerry’s actions in Vietnam.24 Yet no one, amicus sincerely hopes, would suggest that the government could take action against that speech or disqualify a voter’s action—whether the signing of a petition, the making of a contribution, or the casting of a vote—because she had been exposed to one or the other of those communications. Do we really want the Federal Election Commission to decide for all of us whether John Kerry earned his medals? If not, then we should also not want the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics to decide for all of us whether passage of the VLT Initiative is likely to result in substantial funding for education and healthcare.

What are the dangers of this logic expanded to its natural conclusion?

This old wisdom remains wisdom. The Board of Elections’ view of the law would open a Pandora’s box of administrative and judicial interference with politics and democracy. Followed to its logical conclusion, the Board’s reasoning in this case would authorize the Board to set aside the results of the balloting on an initiative on the ground that proponents had mischaracterized the measure in their communications with voters. Why, after all, should the election be held to a lower standard of honesty than the petition drive? The Board’s reasoning might even authorize the Board to set aside the results of a candidate election on similar grounds. Fraud is fraud. But see Brown v. Hartlage, 456 U.S. 45, 60 (1982) (invalidation of election based on false and fraudulent statements of candidate “runs directly contrary to the fundamental premises underlying the First Amendment as the guardian of our democracy.”).
Moreover, the logic of the Board’s position here would certainly authorize the
conviction and imprisonment of many citizens who circulate initiative petitions. Under the Board’s regulations, a circulator must sign an affidavit swearing that he or she “has not made any false statements regarding the initiative or referendum to anyone whose signature is appended to the petition.” 3 D.C.M.R. § 1003.6(i). Such a circulator becomes a perjurer upon a finding that his or her oral advocacy was “false and misleading”—which, according to the Board, includes saying that an initiative will accomplish any beneficial goal when that goal is not “guaranteed.” The chilling effect of such a legal regime on the willingness of citizens to engage in political activity would truly be glacial. What sensible person would risk a felony conviction for perjury for the remarks that he or she might make in the course of oral political discussions with other citizens on the sidewalk?

To put the Supreme Court’s teachings in the vernacular, in the arena of political
speech the cure of government regulation for truth or falsity is worse than the disease of misinformation. No doubt the Board of Elections felt that it was advancing the cause of good government by protecting D.C. voters from inaccurate information. But “[e]xperience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. . . . The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men [and women] of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S.

Ah, but that last bit of analysis is true for both the First and Fourteenth Amendment. Well-meaning governmental purposes, in this case diversity, are indeed the greatest dangers to liberty and equality.

In contrast to the eloquent writing and superb documentation in the 2004 brief, the 2006 ACLU brief hinges its entire legal analysis on a multi-page discussion of the law requiring "purity of elections" and how the requirement of such "purity" requires the government to microscope the opinions of circulators and signers. But even without "misrepresentation," the ACLU then alleges that the very name "Michigan Civil Rights Initiative" and other "strategic" phrases like preferential treatment, themselves were impermissable speech.

Even without misrepresentations, the name of the “Michigan Civil Rights Initiative” itself and rhetoric used by its supporters such as “preferential treatment,” are understandably confusing when they are considered in the context of the general understanding and conventional use of such terms in recent American history. There was testimony at the MCRC hearing that the term “preferential treatment” was understood to refer to discriminatory practices that favor white citizens. Exhibit A. Also, most established “civil rights” organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, Urban League, etc. support affirmative action. This leads to the logical inference that there were strategic language choices made by MCRI that have caused considerable confusion.4

So there you have it. The organization that thinks the racist skinheads or Neo-Nazi protestors have a right to free speech without government intrusion wants the government to make "truth determinations" about MCRI, because they are not like "most established 'civil rights' organizations such as the" ACLU itself.

Perhaps the American "Civil Liberties" Union should rename itself, because it isn't like most "Civil Liberties" organizations that support free speech. Maybe the IRS should "investigate" whether the ACLU's "representations" of itself are "accurate" before renewing its 501c(3) status.