Comments on: Blood in the Boardroom: Budget Battles Divide Senate

By: Timothy

Timothy — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 07:00:14 +0000

I’d rather see Salma Hayek than God, when God smiles there’s nothing but trouble…although I certainly take your meaning.

By: Niedermeyer

Niedermeyer — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 00:29:36 +0000

Speaking of liquor and speed, can I get a HELL YEAH on the fact that there’s no Senate meeting tonight?

No four hour meeting, no trying to make some sense of the madness for the blog post… It’s like looking up to see the face of God smiling at you.

By: Daniels

Daniels — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 21:33:15 +0000

Toby, good to hear from you. I wish you were still on Senate, although I know you are happy as hell to be out of here.

By: Timothy

Timothy — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:01:12 +0000

Optimism won’t get you through the night, Ted. Only massive amounts of liquor and speed can do that.

By: Niedermeyer

Niedermeyer — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:13:13 +0000

Hey Toby, at least the PFC benchmark is at it’s lowest level in a while. Please, a little optimism… it’s the only thing keeping me going

By: Toby

Toby — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 04:54:14 +0000

God forbid someone lower the incidental fee. I love when the students are over charged one million dollars one year, then the current leadership demands for more money. Hey, lets make those free concerts a quarterly thing, I think that is a great use of student funds. This years Senate is more of a joke that last year’s. Walkout anyone…. it seems that will come next

By: Doomscheissah

Doomscheissah — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:23:17 +0000

Is that Sara our lovely ASUO President, Sara Hamilton, by perchance?

By: Sara

Sara — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 04:51:19 +0000

Lol, he’s dead.
That’s not necessarily true, because hypothetically if it does get vetoed, then that means only 2.5% is out of the question, because Senate most likely won’t have 2/3 vote to override it. Any other number though would still require a simply majority. That means if it gets vetoed it could go either way, being passed at a higher percent OR a lower percent. It would be a true gamble. But hopefully Senate won’t have to deal with that; we’re still waiting on a ruling from Con Court whether it is even constitutional to veto.

By: Jacque

Jacque — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 22:42:34 +0000

lol…so much to say on that that I am just going to leave it alone…

By: hesdead

hesdead — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 22:15:14 +0000

Yeah good point Mr. Daniels. There will be at least 8 EXTREMELY POed Senators at Jared.. He’ll never recover…he’ll be dead

By: Doomscheisser

Doomscheisser — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 20:57:47 +0000

You can say that again, Mr. Daniels

By: Daniels

Daniels — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 19:16:53 +0000

This is a step in the right direction. Lets just hope there are no attempts at an executive veto.

By: Timothy

Timothy — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:36:20 +0000

Dude, there is no principle higher than “mock the weak”. But I will wait, though I reserve the right to brood at you. And to demand faster publication while telling the kids to get off of my lawn and pointing a shotgun full of rock salt at them.

By: Doomscheissah

Doomscheissah — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:48:13 +0000

YAY for Hate and Taters!

By: Niedermeyer

Niedermeyer — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 22:21:06 +0000

OK folks, here’s the deal. Everyone who was at the meeting saw what happened, and basically no one else really cares. It has become fairly clear that a sizeable portion of the Senate now sees the light on the fiscal responsibility issue, and I’d rather let that movement grow on it’s merits rather than by mocking it’s opponents. Don’t get me wrong, I would love nothing more than to savage a number of Senators for a number of very good reasons, but giving fiscal responsibility a chance to take hold is worth holding back from mocking a crying child. Your patience with my overly principled stand will be rewarded come the Hate Issue, and the Tater Awards… I promise.

By: Doomscheissah

Doomscheissah — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 07:54:22 +0000

The only ones that I know of that could have cried anything would have been Senator Guerra or Senator SunOwen.

I believe it’s the former.

By: Timothy

Timothy — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 06:40:39 +0000

Wait wait, a Senator cried and the OC isn’t mocking that person in public? Have I stepped into bizzaro world?

By: Niedermeyer

Niedermeyer — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 05:00:39 +0000

Jacque: We agree on a lot, you’re just a lot more optimistic than I. The lines of battle were clearly drawn last night… by the end of the evening, you could basically predict how everyone would vote. Luckily the Senate has enough decorum to act cordial (I give Sara a lot of credit for this), but y’all definately are divided.

As for the process, the real power now lies with the “Appropriations Commitee,” in other words, Senators Lleras, Daniels, Kinsey, Mannis, Hamilton, Sherrick, Ebner and Gulley. They need to understand that in order to make the ASUO healthy again, this money needs to be used in some way that benefits all students. Senators have got to understand that just because there is no convenient mechanism for bringing down surpluses and the I-fee, doesn’t mean it’s not their duty to make these things happen. If no regard is paid to where this money came from, but rather it is a) spent on a worthless monument to the gullibility of the student body or b) spent in a way that does not benefit ALL students, this Senate will go down in memory as the Senate that wasted or unfairly redistributed one million dollars.

In the short term, this committee has got to make up for the failings of the I-fee budgetary process. In the long term something really should be done about the whole shebang, which is why I thank god every day that I’m out of here come spring. Any meaningfull change of any kind always comes slowly… I just want momentum to be headed in the right direction. I think that on some level the majority of Senators know what the right thing to do here is, and this gives me hope.

By: Jacque

Jacque — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 03:38:22 +0000

Also I just wanted to point out that everyone left in pretty good spirits and no one carried any grudges outside of the boardroom so “divided” maybe not such a good adjective… differences of opinions maybe… divide I don’t know…

By: Jacque

Jacque — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 03:36:50 +0000

Hey hey now I think the long meeting speaks to the level of commitment that these senators have trying to do what is right by the Ifee and programs and students and…. BLAH! It’s enough to make your head spin. I think that, as some commentators pointed out, the problem is not that the I-Fee continually goes up but that the process in determining how it goes up and by how much is flawed. I think we still have done nothing to really truely fix that (if so we would have seen a 0% benchmark pass).