Join the Day of Action- April 13 at Sac State

Joe Palermo

On April 13, California State University students and faculty are organizing demonstrations at all 23 CSU campuses across the state to protest the latest wave of brutal budget cuts. CSU students, faculty and staff, alumni and their families have a special obligation to make their voices heard in supporting pragmatic solutions to the state's budget woes that have so adversely affected public higher education. We refuse to sit by passively and watch as the public sector of this state -- most notably higher education -- is systematically decimated.

See video in post below. 

California's fiscal crisis, like that of many other state governments, is a product of the Great Wall Street Toxic Waste Dump of 2008. After the bankers' recklessness ignited a financial hydrogen bomb, home values plummeted, life savings and retirements evaporated, jobs vanished, and California's tax revenues dried up by about $20 billion a year. Lower valued homes shrank property taxes and unemployed people cannot pay income taxes. Yet, as in Wisconsin, we're told that the crisis is somehow the fault of teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, social workers and other public employees.

The Republican legislative minority in California has killed every good-faith attempt to address realistically the state's fiscal mess. After months of pretending to "negotiate" the "GOP 5," in the name of the minority, conjured up 53 brand new demands before they would agree to allow California's citizens the opportunity to vote on extending existing taxes. This blatant obstructionism came after Governor Jerry Brown and the Democratic majority sought bipartisan support by cutting the state budget by about $13 billion, including another whopping $500 million downgrade in the funding of the CSU system.

For Democrats, the late budgets, cobbled together budgets, and draconian cuts to programs (like higher education) that serve their constituents only make them look like hapless co-conspirators in the attack on the public sector. If we follow the Republican lead California will trail behind Mississippi in every social indicator save for the size of our prison population.

The California Republicans' ultimatum was nothing but a cynical attempt to derail the possibility of negotiating a budget (except on the their terms). They are clearly willing to throw the state over the cliff, and Governor Brown cannot "shame" them by explaining how painful an "all-cuts" budget would be. These people know no shame. They hate anything with the word "public" attached to it, public libraries, public parks, public schools, public employees, public higher education.

The Republican minority skates by free of accountability enjoying the best of both worlds: they can tie the government in knots holding the budget hostage to demand their maximum concessions, while blaming the Democratic majority for not "being able to govern," because, after all, they are in the majority. The logjam never seems to be broken year after year, even amidst abnormal times of long-term high unemployment, a collapse in housing prices and a moribund construction sector. Still, the Republicans will not budge, even when the state faces an unprecedented crisis. Someone should ask the simple question: How can these men and women call themselves "public servants" when they are so failing in their service to the public?

What we've been witnessing in recent years is nothing short of the wholesale auctioning off, often to the lowest bidder (or no "bidder" at all), of the public commons right under the feet of the majority of California's citizens who never signed on to this long-term project of not-so "creative" destruction.

California's economy has little chance of recovering from the Great Recession if we remain mired in a politically generated fiscal crisis that prevents us from investing in our future. Unwise public policy today has a tendency to come back and haunt us later. The decision to de-fund higher education amidst prolonged high unemployment and underemployment and record home foreclosures will go down in the state's history as one of the stupidest public policy choices ever taken.

In California's $1.7 trillion economy, the money is there to deal with the debt. Since the Republican minority has effectively blocked the option of putting to the voters extending the existing taxes we should begin gathering signatures for a proposition that raises taxes on the state's richest corporations and individuals with the revenues reserved for education at all levels, from kindergartners to doctoral students.

The Republican minority's obstructionism, even in a time of great economic turmoil, has brought with it an astonishing level of cynicism to our public discourse. It poisons our politics with paralysis, poisons our society with unmet needs and unnecessary suffering, and poisons our democracy because of the arrogance of minority rule. People who do not believe in government shouldn't insist on being part of it.

Just take, for example, the kind of "leadership" a California state senator like Ted Gaines (R-Roseville) provides his constituents. He sends his own children to private school while stubbornly ensuring that the children who have the unfortunate fate of living in his district (and whose parents cannot afford private school) are warehoused in schools that are little more than hollowed out shells after years of heartless budget cuts Gaines supported. And now Gaines is a proud member of the Republican minority that refuses to allow Californians even the opportunity to vote on whether or not to extend a set of existing (regressive) taxes to deal with the budget.

California doesn't need any more budget "deals" negotiated behind closed doors. The ongoing budget crisis affects all Californians and we should have a right to vote on sensible measures to address it. What's truly amazing is that even after Governor Brown and the Democratic legislative majority met the Republicans far past "half way" with $13 billion in savage budget cuts that tear apart Democratic constituencies, neither the Republicans nor the press give any credit whatsoever to the Democrats for this huge sacrifice. The frame on the budget debate gives the Democrats absolutely zero credit for the cuts that hurt them politically with their base. The Republicans move the goal posts and the Democrats simply shrug and continue the game as if nothing has changed.

But the dysfunction does not stop at the state Capitol, it can also be found in the CSU Chancellor's office and the Board of Trustees who seem content to oversee the diminution of the institution they are "entrusted" to protect so long as their six-figure salaries and perks continue as if nothing has changed. In recent years the CSU faculty has endured furloughs and waves of budget cuts. Academic departments have been under great pressure to make do with less and stuff more students into fewer courses. Meanwhile student fees have shot up over 200 percent in the past two years. These days either you earn a college degree or you will most likely spend the bulk of your productive life in some backwater job somewhere. Who represents the students and their families who are being held hostage?

The budget constraints have led the CSU administration to put into overdrive its business model for higher education, to treat education like a "business," like a "product" that is "delivered" to a "customer." The administrators say that "efficiency" will improve the system. Unlike the "University" of Phoenix, or Kaplan, or other for-profit diploma mills that have bestowed millions of dollars in profits on their CEOs and shareholders, the cash-strapped public colleges and universities are operating on shoestring budgets. The irony is that as CSU administrators seek to save money due to the drying up of funding they're pushing the system in the direction of the for-profits by slashing course offerings and railroading more and more students into on-line courses that are virtually identical to Phoenix or Kaplan. So the end result is a situation where parents and students are paying more and more each year in fees and tuition and other expenses, driving up their debt ratios, and often working longer hours to finance their educations, while the administration stuffs them into ever-larger classes or into cookie-cutter, standardized Internet courses.

My colleagues and I refuse to believe that the majority of Californians agree with the Republican minority in the Legislature that today's young people should be cast off like so much dead weight. The future of this state depends on the brainpower and skills of these young people. Tens of thousands of potential CSU students who are clamoring to enroll are being left out in the cold. Why are today's young people less deserving of having access to a high quality, low-cost education than someone who came through the system twenty or thirty years ago?

On April 13th CSU students and the California Faculty Association will be demonstrating at CSUs across the state. We call upon everyone who values public higher education in California, (or has benefited from having access to it), to please join us in delivering the message to our elected "leaders": We aren't going to sit idly by and watch as this precious public resource that contributes so much to our state and to our local communities is torn apart in service of an extremist ideological agenda of a recalcitrant Republican minority.

From: Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/in-california-the-battle-higher-education_b_847888.html

With permission of the author.

1,500 in Sacramento Rally for Wisconsin Workers

Over 1500  union members and supporters rallied again  at the State Capitol in Sacramento  on Feb.26,  called by Move- on.com, and Jobs with Justice to support the working people in Wisconsin in their struggle to defend their  union rights.  Speakers described the financial crisis that began  2007  as  an assault on organized  labor, working people, and our democracy.   A retired teacher from Wisconsin detailed many of the events occurring in Madison in an effort to end the demonstrations by public employees and families there.  For example, Wisconsin teachers and public employees have agree to all of the demanded salary and benefit cuts, but insist that their union rights to negotiate be protected.  This defense of union rights is not acceptable to Governor Walker and the Koch Brothers who fund him.

 Several speakers, and several signs noted that the assault in Wisconsin is class war- by the rich against working people.

While Wall Street has recovered and returned to profitability, working people continue to suffer  15 million unemployed with at least 10 million more under employed.   It is more than a crisis - the reality is that the financial class has looted the U.S. economy.  The Oligarchs  took 13 trillion dollars  out of the economy and caused 4 million people to lose their homes and  another 4.5 million to fall into foreclosure.   Now they want you and I to pay for their greed by forcing budget cuts on the states. 

            In 2010-2011 the crisis is hitting state and local governments hard.  The AFL-CIO is tracking this assault at http://www.aflcio.org/issues/states/.   

In November of 2010 Republicans and the Tea Party  won a majority in the House of Representatives, took control of several state houses including Wisconsin , elected governors, and now dominate the main steam media with their messages.  Conservative forces, the Republicans, the Tea Party, and others use the economic  crisis in the states to launch aggressive campaigns against public sector unions and the salaries and pensions of public sector workers.

            The Sacramento response, like rallies in other states condemned the anti union campaigns of Republican governors and legislators.  In Wisconsin Governor Walker's immediate attack is aimed directly at some 200,000 public workers in Wisconsin.

As Rose Ann DeMoro Executive Director,  California Nurses Association said in a well distributed letter,

“Working people did not create the recession or the budgetary crisis facing federal, state and local governments, and there can be no more concessions, period.

It should be apparent that the right wants to scapegoat workers and their unions, and is trying to exploit the economic crisis for an all-out assault on unions, public employees, and all working people in a campaign that is funded by right-wing, corporate billionaires like the Koch brothers.

Who caused the economic crisis? Banks, Wall Street speculators, mortgage lenders, global corporations shifting jobs from the U.S. overseas.

Who is profiting in the recession? Corporate profits, third quarter of 2010, were $1.6 trillion, 28 percent higher than the year before, the biggest one-year jump in history.”

         At the Saturday rally in Sacramento Jim Hard of SEIU 1000 said that if the Republicans are able to break unions in Wisconsin and the Mid West, next they will be attacking social security.

         John Reiger of Veterans for Peace said that over 50% of the federal budget went to war and defense.  If we had these billions here, we could hire the teachers, fire fighters, police, nurses and social workers we need to take care of our own communities.

            The Sacramento rally was organized by Move-on.com as one of over 50 rallies nationwide today, one in each of the state capitols plus rallies in major cities including Chicago and New York City.  Each rally united unions and citizens groups to  oppose the attacks on union rights  of  Wisconsin Governor  Walker  and the Republican majorities in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and other states.  

     The turn out on Saturday was impressive since labor had held a similar rally on Tues and turned out over 2,500 on the same issues.  Some 75 Tea Party supporters rallied  to support Governor Walker and state budget cuts at the other end of the Capitol Plaza.
The Sacramento Bee has  a photo essay on their web page.

Reported by Duane Campbell .

The fight in Wisconsin is just downstream from the Wall Street swindle. It isn’t really about deficits. And it certainly isn’t about teachers or civil servants being too well paid! It’s about power. The corporate right is trying to exploit the economic crisis to make the rich still richer. It’s time to say “No” -- time to make Wall Street pay its fair share.

With taxes on corporations and the wealthy falling, they expect the rest of us to make up the difference -- from Wisconsin to Ohio to the nation as a whole. It’s time to flip the script.

We have a modest proposal:  Pass a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street traders.

• A tiny tax on Wall Street transactions would raise $100 billion per year in revenue and $1 trillion in ten years.
• This “Financial Transaction Tax” would rein in the footloose market speculators.
• It would put Wall Street to work for Main Street.

Please sign our petition demanding that Congress pass a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street traders.

The super-rich players played us when they pushed to deregulate Wall Street. They caused the global economic collapse with their “greed is good” ethic. The financial crisis in the states is a direct result of these Wall Street manipulations.

Is it any surprise that before he became Ohio’s anti-union governor, John Kasich was a high-paid executive at the now-defunct Lehman Brothers pushing Ohio’s pension fund into the kinds of risky investments that nearly tanked our nation’s economy?

There’s plenty of wealth in Wisconsin, in Ohio, in our country. The problem? Most of it is at the top. We can’t have democracy when the top one percent in our nation have more assets than the bottom 95 percent.  And we can’t allow state deficits to become a conversation about which group of workers gets cut the most.

We call on Congress to pass a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street now. It’s time Wall Street paid for for the mess they made.

And it’s time for the Congressional Progressive Caucus to boldly promote this powerful legislation.

Sign here and we will deliver your message loud and clear to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has the potential to be a major force for flipping the script on Capitol Hill.

Signed,

Aimee, Sarah and the RootsAction team