Janet Napolitano Hid Stash of $175 MILLON for Berkeley, Home of ANTIFA Protests
The University of California school system and the site of an ongoing free speech battle has another problem—corruption. In the battle over free speech, President Janet Napolitano has been criticized for not taking action to protect the university, free speech, and the First Amendment of the Constitution. Janet Napolitano has a bigger problem, though. A state audit found that the University of California—and in particular, Napolitano’s office of the president—hid a stash of $175 million in secret funds while its leaders requested more money from the state. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the audit found that the secret fund ballooned due to UC purposely overestimating how much was needed to run the school system, which includes ten campuses in the state. Janet Napolitano, the former Department of Homeland Security chief, is in charge of the UC system.
Napolitano denied the audit’s claim. She reportedly said the money was held for any unexpected expenses. Her office also denied the amount in the fund but had no documentation to dispute the report’s findings. Elaine Howle, the state auditor who authored the report, found that from 2012 to 2016, UC’s office of the president attempted to raise more funding by inflating estimates of what was needed to operate the university system. Howle also said that a top staff member in Napolitano’s office improperly screened confidential surveys that were sent to each campus and deleted or changed answers critical of Napolitano before the surveys were sent to the auditor. “I’ve never had a situation like that in my 17 years as a state auditor,” Howle said. “My attorneys are looking at whether any improper government activities occurred. Taken as a whole, these problems indicate that significant change is necessary to strengthen the public’s trust in the University of California.” Howle said Napolitano overcharged the UC system’s campuses to fund its operations, paid its employees significantly more than state employees, and interfered with the auditing process. The audit found that over the course of four years, the UC’s central bureaucracy amassed more than $175 million in reserve funds by spending significantly less than it budgeted for yet still asked for increases in future funding based on its previous years’ overestimated budgets rather than its actual expenditures. “In effect, the office of the president received more funds than it needed each year, and it amassed millions of dollars in reserves that it spent with little or no oversight,” the report said. University employees and lawmakers, who requested the audit, expressed outrage over the audit’s findings. “Today we learned that after squandering millions of public dollars on bloated management and unaccountable initiatives, the office of the president has effectively operated a slush fund and hid hundreds of millions of public dollars from public scrutiny,” Kathryn Lybarger, president of UC’s largest employee union, said in a statement. She criticized the office’s “skyrocketing executive pay,” a reference to the audit’s finding that the ten executives in the office were paid a total of $3.7 million in the 2014-15 fiscal year. That amounted to over $700,000 more than the combined salaries of their highest paid state employee counterparts. The audit went on to say that University of California president Janet Napolitano’s office hid the secret funds even from its own board of regents and created a secret spending plan while padding the salaries and benefits of her staff. For years, state lawmakers have been clashing with the university system over its opaque finances and escalating costs amid calls for belt-tightening by Gov. Jerry Brown. The tension between the state and the prestigious university system had mounted since the recession, when UC repeatedly hiked tuition to backfill state budget cuts and turned away record numbers of California high school seniors while admitting higher-paying out-of-state and international students. The audit cited extensive problems with financial management at UC’s central office, including the following findings: Administrative spending shortly after Napolitano took control increased by roughly $80 million, or 28 percent, between 2012-13 and 2015-16, but the central office doesn’t have a reliable or consistent way to track such expenditures. It received significantly more money than it needed in each of the four years reviewed by the auditor but asked for increases in future funding based on inflated budgets from previous years. It paid executives a total of $3.7 million in the fiscal year 2015-16—$700,000 more than other top-paid executives at comparable state agencies—and spent at least $21.6 million in employee benefits, including contributions to supplemental retirement savings plans. Janet Napolitano was United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2009 to 2013 under President Barack Obama. The auditor’s report can be found here. |
Tag: Berkeley
Exposing The Hidden Structures Behind An ANTIFA Riot
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The Berkeley Riots And The Weaponization Of The Mainstream Media
Recent “protests” against conservative speakers on college campuses have been marred by violence, yet excused and legitimized by mainstream media.
University of California’s Berkeley campus, once the sight of iconic protests in favor of free speech in the 1960s, became embroiled in controversy last week after violent protests last Wednesday night shut down an event where controversial Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopolous was set to speak. A few hours before the event was set to start, groups of those in opposition to Milo began destroying property and their acts became increasingly more destructive over time. Numerous videos, posted on social media and captured by local news stations, also showed incidents where some of the protestors, apparently belonging to the anti-fascists or antifa movement, were beating people with flag poles and other objects. At least one man was beaten unconscious. As the violence began to spiral out of control, the event was ultimately canceled but not before over $100,000 in damages were done to UC Berkeley’s campus. Following the event, antifa groups took to social media to declare “war” on those with opposing views along with promises to “dismantle the state.”
Though this “protest” was undoubtedly disturbing, the aftermath has arguably been more so. Emboldened by the events at UC Berkeley, antifa groups elsewhere gathered at NYU to disrupt the scheduled talk of another conservative figure, Gavin McInnes – co-founder of Vice News and host and commentator at the Rebel Media. While police were able to prevent the same destruction of property and violence that had taken place at Berkeley, protestors infiltrated the event and McInnes himself ended up being pepper sprayed and attacked. Antifa members have also taken to making threats against alternative media reporters in the days since the riots at Berkeley. In one case, Cassandra Fairbanks of We Are Change – a media outlet that is neither liberal nor conservative in the traditional sense – as well as her young daughter were threatened on Twitter by the Arizona Antifa Front.
Despite the chilling effect this is likely to have on the expression of conservative viewpoints on college campuses – and potentially elsewhere – the media as well as many politicians and public figures have either condoned the violence or publicly supported it. Major publications such as the New York Times hardly even mentioned the violence, only choosing to reference “self-described anarchists clad in face masks and spoiling for a fight.” The LA Times adopted the same strategy, focusing on free speech issues and Yiannopolous’ political views and most controversial statements while avoiding any discussion of the violence. Liberal-leaning outlets, such as the Daily Kos, took it a step further, characterizing the incident as one where one of Trump’s “little Breitbart friends had a bad night.” In addition to “mainstream” media, some politicians even expressly praised the riots such as Florida Congresswoman Val Demings who called the events at Berkeley “a beautiful sight.”
In addition to praising or condoning the violence, some mainstream outlets used the opportunity to blame conservatives and the right wing for the protests. For instance, CNN ran the headline “Milo Yiannopolous is trying to convince colleges that hate speech is cool” following the riots even though Milo did not even speak that evening save for a response to the rioting posted on his YouTube channel.
CNN argued that Milo was promoting “hate speech” for the following past statements:
In his campus talks, Yiannopoulos spares few targets. He’s gone after Black Lives Matter activists and has argued rape culture on campuses doesn’t exist. He portrays white males as victims and views social justice as a form of cancer. He has said people become feminists because they are “deeply physically unattractive.”
Though these opinions may be unpopular (especially on college campuses), they don’t necessarily constitute expressly racist, anti-semitic, or fascist ideas – though they do largely consist of critiques (albeit often crude ones) of left-leaning movements. The accusations of Nazism or white supremacy regarding Milo also seem out of place considering that he is Jewish, an immigrant, homosexual, and strongly prefers the romantic company of African-American men.
However, some went even further – accusing conservatives and Breitbart News of actually orchestrating the riots despite the clear evidence that the violent protestors identified as part of the far-left “antifa” movement. For instance, Political commentator, UC Berkeley professor, and former Secretary of Labor under Clinton Robert Reich postulated that “Yiannopolous and Breitbart were in cahoots with the agitators, in order to lay the groundwork for a Trump crackdown on universities and their federal funding.” The “crackdown” to which Reich refers is based off of a tweet from President Trump that essentially warned Berkeley to protect free speech following the riots or face the possibility of a loss of federal funding. In an interview with CNN, Reich reiterated this scenario, saying that he “wouldn’t bet against it.”
Clearly, this disproportionate, and frankly dishonest, characterization of the events is ultimately creating a consensus among the viewers of these media outlets that violent “protests” are acceptable – that is, at least, as long as those being attacked are conservative. Whether this is intentional or not is up for debate, but its ultimate effect is not. Violence in lieu of responsible political discourse is never favorable and condoning it for one group but not the other is the most dangerous type of partisanship the media and public figures can practice. All evidence seems to suggest that the mainstream media is quickly becoming weaponized.
The divide made bare during the most recent presidential election is becoming more and more glaring. Yet, regardless of one’s political sympathies, there is clearly something amiss with the violence now targeting conservative speakers at college campuses. Though many college students are liberal-leaning, it is important that students have the opportunity to be exposed to variety of opinions. While Yiannopolous and McInnes are indeed controversial and consistently breach the conventions of “political correctness”, there is insufficient evidence to condemn them as Nazis and white supremacists (remember – Yiannopolous is a homosexual Jew and McInnes co-founded “liberal” and “hipster” Vice). Labeling speeches they have yet to give as “hate speech” based largely on mainstream media-driven consensus does a disservice to free speech.
If conservatives were the ones violently “protesting” liberal-leaning speakers, there is no denying that the media and political response would be immediate and devastating. Yet now, the media and political establishment seem content to let some elements of the political left in the United States transform into the very thing they are claiming to fight against – fascists – with complete impunity. Indeed, Winston Churchill predicted this decades ago, saying that “The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists.” Will Americans be able to see past these attempts to divide us and pit us against one another? We can only hope, but turning off the television news seems like a logical first step.
