Priorities and Liberalism

A friend out of town mentions a news story to me. Seems that the Dayton Daily News is digging into the astronomical salary and perks received by E. Gordon Gee as President of THE Ohio State University. Remember Acton's Law? The old saying that "absolute power corrupts absolutely." I can tell you that three pages of Google Search found papers reporting this story all over the country, and the OSU "Lantern" (the campus paper) covered it but apparently not the Columbus Dispatch. Maybe I just missed it, but it sure wasn't a top item on Google.  A lesson for all those who rely on one source for news.

Turns out that Dr. Gee is paid way more than comparable college presidents. The Daily News reports that E.G.G. is paid more than the presidents of the U of Texas and U of Michigan - combined! Gee even received $64,000 from the University for those ridiculous bow ties. That's shameful. Almost as bad as the $8 million they've paid him since 2007. His comeback to this criticism is, "I make billion dollar decisions every day." So he makes decisions worth $365 Billion a year? The university's budget is about $5 billion a year. Is Gee telling us he earns his pay five days a year?  Aside from the fact that's just BS, what an ego. I know this: just 100 miles away, OSU is more known for football than academics. If E.G.G. just made the same salary as the President of the United States, I'd be ok with it - now there's a guy who makes some big decisions everyday. And cutting his pay to that level would have poured millions back into the coffers.

Let me see if I understand: College is expensive, so we have to make lots of loans available. Kids and their families take the loans, and are saddled with debt for years. With lots more students and lots more money flowing in, we now have a big business enterprise, so we have to hire top dollar executives to run it. To pay for them, we raise tuition. This makes college more expensive, so we have to make more loans available...

 

Meanwhile, college presidents, professors and the liberal politicians who love them tell us that overpaid executives in the private sector are the problem in America today.  They never blink at the king-sized checks that so many public employees get at that level.  E.G.G. has been followed by controversy over his lavish spending every place he's gone. But that hasn't stopped his anointment as the king of THE OSU.

 

Next time a politician tells me big oil and big business executives get too much money, I will have a reply. Hopefully it will leave my questioner a little more thoughtful while the citizens of Ohio try to recover from the E.G.G. left on their faces by THE OSU.