Wednesday, November 11, 2009

What's More Important: My Conference or a Crook's Tie?

So it turns out that the State of Illinois owes a huge sum of money to our university and refuses to give it back. In order to keep paying salaries to people, the university had to stop all other payments to its employees. We will not get reimbursed for the books and DVDs we bought for class or for our travel expenses.It seems that for our society giving the criminal CEO of Goldman Sachs a new boat is a lot more of a priority that offering my students a chance to have a worthy education.

I will be speaking at a conference on Saturday and I wanted to be reimbursed the $360 I spent on this trip. Now this will not be possible. Even though the university had promised me this money at the time of hire, now I will not be getting it.

I went on the Hermes website and found the famous bicycle tie worn by the vile Lloyd Blankfein. Here it is although in a more subdued color scheme. It costs $170. So if this ugly little twerp were to forgo just a couple of his ridiculous ties, this could pay for my conference. I will never understand why the state prefers to pay for his ties and not for my research and educational activities.

Maybe according to these people, my work in education is less godly than being able to rob people blind while dressed in a vulgar tie.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The State of Illinois has also ceased payments to the insurance company that provides insurance to its employees. In turn, the insurance company has ceased payments to all treatment providers. The trickle down result is that many doctors are refusing to see patients who are state employees and insured through the State.

Vile ties are more important than healthy citizens and employees as well, it seems.

- J

Clarissa said...

Thank you for telling. I was going to see a doctor next week but now, I guess, that plan is shot to hell. This is too annoying.

Clarissa said...

Thank you for telling. I was going to see a doctor next week but now, I guess, that plan is shot to hell. This is too annoying.

V said...

Interesting... This (I mean cutting the conference support) is the first (and so far the only) thing they did at our university.

In the same time, the university very recently discovered that they have several million allocated to fulfilling their "strategic plan", and that there are no activities going on which are actually congruent with the said plan. And have not been going on for years. Thus, everybody is running like headless chickens trying to spend that money on things which look good (administration) or to get that money to do something actually useful (us)

Anonymous said...

Not all doctors are refusing the insurance, so I think it would be worth investigating before forgoing a visit. Good luck!

- J (fellow state employee and, as of recently, avid fan of your blog)

Clarissa said...

Thank you so much, J! This is always great to hear.