CA Budget Held Hostage for Tax Increases

[Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com>]

As we in the Rouge Forum predicted years ago, the 
collision of NCLB sanctions and a falling economy is about to happen.

How fast the economy collapses would require a 
crystal ball, but it is clear that
        *the failed wars will not end, but 
expand (the best the US will get in Afghanistan 
is a draw, which itself is unlikely---300,000 
Soviet troops retreated in disgrace, fighting an 
enemy that threw rocks at tanks, and in Iraq the 
US strategic and tactical incompetence, coupled 
with sheer cowardice, is there for every other 
imperial military to see and makes wider war likely),
        *the related hike in the cost of oil, as of today the highest ever,
        *the national, home mortgage, and 
personal debt collapses that could easily lead to bank collapses, t
        *the dramatic rise in food costs (wheat, corn, meat, cheese, etc)
        *all add up to a very, very serious 
problem---the whirlwind that Chalmers Johnson 
suggested in Nemesis would bring fascism to the US.

The NCLB sanctions will kick in all over the 
nation with a vengeance next year, or even the 
end of this school year. Already schools are 
being closed in droves in wrecked cities like 
Detroit, teachers laid off by the hundreds. NCLB 
sanctions would, if applied would deepen social 
inequality and, of course, mean the loss of 
school worker jobs. And, as we have seen, those 
who teach where students arrive with the least 
inheritance, where parental income is low, will 
get hit first, but everyone else will be next.

This does not have to happen.

Nor do we have to follow the likely union litany 
about making some noise, then figuring out what 
concessions to make. The history of the last 30 
years and more of whatever there is of a labor 
movement in the US demonstrates that concessions 
do not save jobs but, like feeding blood to 
sharks, concessions make bosses want more. Look 
at the UAW which did nothing but make concessions 
as hundreds of thousands of auto workers lost 
their jobs, and now the UAW has agreed to a 
tiered wage system that would pay new workers 1/3 
to 1/2 what more senior workers make.

We should reject, angrily, maneuvers from, for 
example, the AFT that wants to impose more and 
more regressive taxes on poor and working people 
in order to pay for schooling. If there is any 
tax increase, it should be solely aimed at the 
rich, inherited wealth, large property holdings, 
corporate profits. It we follow the AFT's 
thinking, we will not only betray the people we 
need most, poor and working people, they will see 
us, correctly, as an opposition. We should not 
even consider some kind of balancing tax as 
suggested below, a sales tax and a tax on the 
rich. Working people are taxed unjustly already.

The economic crisis and the failed military 
adventures alone demonstrate that elites are not 
so powerful, but very weak and vulnerable now. 
Nothing is inevitable about the future. If we 
stop thinking of the government, the economy, and 
the arms of that state as "ours," but rather 
"theirs", it sets up far more possibilities. They 
still have plenty of money. Oil profits remain 
higher than ever, for example. And this is still 
the richest country in the history of the world.

So how do we get their money? By taking control 
of the value we create. In schools, as in any 
real work place, we create value collectively and 
cannot win control of it alone. As our product is 
not a Ford, but the hopes of children, we need to 
pass along real hope, not fictitious hope, 
meaning we need to tell them that, for example, 
we are not all in this together in one united 
nation but, in fact, we are in the midst of a ruthless class struggle.

We need to recognize that a key purpose of 
capitalist schooling, as important as profits and 
perhaps more-so, is social control, and we need 
to hand elites all the civil strife that we can.

When the bosses say Cutback, we need to say 
Fightback. We can start by opting out of the 
exams which, anyway, are educators building their own scaffolds.

No concessions. None. Nothing. In fact, we want 
lower class size in all schools, more pay, better 
benefits. We are not going to engage in 
bargaining with a plan to give back to bosses, 
but to take right out of their pockets. They need 
to be told that and settle in with the idea. 
Their alternative is turmoil. As France, 1968 
demonstrates, educators and students can spark 
widespread social change. We know that civil 
strife can put elites into retreat, force 
concessions from them. What are our possible methods beyond test opt-outs?

We should not be fooled in the current media 
theme park that is the national election in which 
we will get to choose which person, from the 
executive committee of the rich, will oppress us 
best. This is a structural crisis that goes 
beyond any chance that a "good person from the 
ruling class" is going to soften the hit. They 
will not. If anything, the election is being used 
to build nationalism and turn whatever there has 
been of democracy into a new religion, a hothouse 
for nationalism and people recreating their own oppression in new ways.

In the face of massive layoffs, we can seize and 
shut down their schools. Seizing schools is built 
right into the history of the labor movement, has 
been done before, and is the best way to strike 
in education. It is hard to defend a strike 
perimeter around a high school or middle school. 
It is easy to go inside, drive out the bosses, 
bring food, and settle in for a long stay, with 
supporters on the outside prepared to bring food. 
Bosses are reluctant to attack sit downers as 
there is a lot of valuable stuff in schools.

Elementary teachers need to consider the 
possibility that they are potentially the most 
powerful people in the school work force. Not 
only do they set up kids' world views and 
attitudes, they provide the key baby-sitting role 
that makes school absolutely necessary for so 
many people. When schools are struck, the first 
pressure to end the strike comes from merchants 
around middle schools (who get looted) but the 
second group is elementary parents.

We need to prepare to offer parents that service, 
and real education as well, opening Freedom 
Schools in communities where people can teach 
about those vital issues in life that are nearly 
illegal in schools today: love and pleasure, work 
and labor, rational knowledge, and the struggle for freedom.

There is a real fight ahead. We need to know that and prepare.

Up the rebels

best r




<http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-taxes5mar05,0,2627191.story>http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-taxes5mar05,0,2627191.story
From the Los Angeles Times


State Democrats determined to raise taxes

Legislative leaders, saying school cuts under the 
governor's proposed budget are unacceptable, are 
prepared to dig in for a long fight to get about $5 billion in tax increases.
By Evan Halper
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

1:11 PM PST, March 4, 2008

SACRAMENTO ­ Democratic legislative leaders 
declared this morning that they are prepared to 
delay the state budget this year if that's what 
it takes to get tax increases, which they called 
the only reasonable solution to California's multibillion-dollar shortfall.

"This is going to be the fight of a lifetime," 
Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) declared at 
a news conference on the steps of a Sacramento 
high school that faces teacher layoffs and bigger 
classes under the governor's proposed budget, 
which closes the deficit with spending cuts, borrowing and deferrals.

"We are not going to be going anywhere this 
summer," he said, referring to the annual midyear 
process of trying to agree on a budget by the 
July 1 start of the new fiscal year. "I told 
everybody that wants to go to the Democratic 
[National] Convention, ... TiVo it. That is close as you are going to get."

Perata drew his line in the sand while standing 
with his successor as Senate chief, Democrat 
Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, and other 
Democratic senators and school leaders. Perata 
said the governor's proposal to cut school 
spending by 10% is unacceptable, and Democrats 
will reject any budget that includes less for 
education next year than this year.

Asked how Democrats propose to make up the 
difference, Perata said: "Raise taxes. That clear enough? Raise taxes."

Given the state's dire finances, he said, "no one 
is going to tell me . . . the average Californian 
would not be willing to pay pennies on the dollar 
more for an education system . . . that is worth 
what we believe California is about."

Perata said Democrats want about $5 billion in 
tax increases and will spend the next few months 
devising their plan for which taxes to raise. He 
said they are considering sales taxes, and taxes on the rich.

"The public knows what needs to be done," he 
said. "They are waiting for the leaders to step 
up and do it. So we are going to do it."

Republican lawmakers have repeatedly said they 
will not vote for any budget that includes new taxes.

<mailto:evan.halper@latimes.com>evan.halper@latimes.com



If you want other stories on this topic, search 
the Archives at <http://www.latimes.com/archives>latimes.com/archives.
<http://www.latimes.com/copyright>
TMS Reprints

<http://www.latimes.com/copyright>Article licensing and reprint options


Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times | 
<http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-privacy,0,3125046.htmlstory>Privacy 
Policy | 
<http://www.latimes.com/services/site/lat-terms,0,6713384.htmlstory>Terms 
of Service
<https://myaccount.latimes.com/newSubscriptionZip.do?source=latweb>Home 
Delivery | 
<http://www.latimes.com/services/site/adservices/la-media-contacts,0,650134.htmlstory>Advertise 
| 
<http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/search.html>Archives 
| 
<http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-contactus,0,3944908.htmlstory>Contact 
| 
<http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-about-sitemap,0,7322958.htmlstory>Site 
Map | <http://www.latimes.com/services/site/>Help

partners: <http://ktla.trb.com/>
KTLA
   <http://www.holahoy.com/>
Hoy