Man, why does the state gotta hate on education? First 6,000 newbie teachers get axed and now UW unveils the $73 million worth of university budget cuts. How it looks: admin is screwed, but to help academic units, UW will dip into its $10 million "rainy day" reserve fund. Academic priority went to the university's money-making programs, surprisingly, that do the most teaching. Buh-bye law, hello psychology! Now for the five or six remaining faculty and handful of students, it's not great news. Especially for the 300+ freshman not getting into UW this fall. (Curse you, algebra!) Here are the big cuts that academic programs will leave at the guillotine: Arts and Sciences ($10.5 million), Medicine ($5.3 million), Engineering ($4 million), Business ($1.9 million), Law ($1.6 million), and Ocean and Fishery Sciences, Nursing, and UW Graduate School ($0.9 million each). more ›

Governor Christine Gregoire has admitted Washington is facing a budget deficit for 2009-11 (currently the state has a surplus), after third-party "GOP" candidate (He's what now? A Republican?) Dino Rossi staked out the issue. Now that she's announced cutbacks and a raid on the state's rainy day fund to cut the projected $3.2 billion deficit by half, Rossi can't find anything good to say about that, either. It is thrilling to hear a Republican deride reckless deficit spending; Ronald Reagan was all for it. But besides his time machine which transports tomorrow's deficits to today, Rossi seems to have a magic calculator, too--his 8-lane 520 bridge practically pays for itself. more ›