Oppose the Right Wing/Republican assault on students, unions, and the California Dream

Oppose the Right Wing/Republican assault on students, unions, and the California Dream.

Students are needed to  build a resistance!

The nation,  including California, is suffering a severe recession.  In this crisis  we need to rebuild the promise of California.  That promise is a good job for all,  the opportunity to have  a rewarding career, a decent life,  and the chance for a good education.  The budget cut mania  does not promote good jobs nor  rewarding   careers.  It only digs the hole deeper. Cutting k-12 and higher education makes the state economy  worse.

   The  economic crisis has already  forced the cutting of higher education, of k-12 education, and of social welfare systems.

What caused this crisis ? It was caused by the greed and avarice of the financial class and aided by the politicians of both major political parties.   The  major banks and corporations looted the economy creating an international meltdown.  Now, they have been rewarded with bail out money.  The crisis was not caused by students, teachers, public employees  nor recipients of social security.   We already suffer from  cuts in parks,  in universities, in nurses, libraries and police and fire  protection.

   The  continuing economic decline has had a devastating impact on the California budget- and the budgets of 42 other states.   Revenues have continued to plunge and  legislatures  have been forced to make a series of deep cuts to virtually all of the state's programs, including the university systems.  Finance capital stole the future of many in this generation.

  For this year Governor Brown proposes a budget with  $14 billion in more cuts.  In addition, the Governor proposes ballot initiatives for June to extend the current tax rates for five more years.   Republicans are trying to keep these initiatives off the ballot.  If these taxes are not extended, the total cut to the budget will be some $26 billion dollars. The Governor’s  current budget proposal would reduce the state general funds allocated to the CSU to $2.29 billion in 2011/12, 12.5% less than the 2010/11 budget act –this on top of  over $4 billion in prior years’ cuts.   If the taxes are not extended, these cuts would at least double and tuition would increase by up to 50%.  These cuts would be devastating for students and working families.

   This fiscal crisis in the state did not fall from the sky; it resulted from the Great Recession and the looting of our economy by Wall Street and Corporate America.  The proposed budget cuts will only lengthen and deepen the Recession.  Some politicians claim that we can’t afford public education and good universities.  However, there is plenty of money to fund basic human services if we go where the money is; the rich who have gamed the system and accumulated vast wealth in the last three decades.

While  working people  are loosing their jobs in budget cuts, major corporations continue to use the rigged tax code to avoid paying any federal taxes at all. If you have  one dollar  in your wallet, you’re paying more than the  combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and Bank of America.

Evan worse, the very wealthy such as the Koch Brothers, are using the budget crisis they created to attack union workers in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana.  Make no mistake about it- if they win in Wisconsin the fight will be brought to California.

Alternatives to painful  budget cuts

Repeal or tax the Republican/Obama Tax Cuts for the Wealthiest 5%.  This would generate about $8 billion annually in California.

Enforce the current law taxing sales of goods by out of state companies (such as Amazon) over the internet.  $1.2 billion.

Tax Oil Extraction when companies take our oil out of the ground.  Alaska, Louisiana, and Texas charge about 12.5%.   $10 billion.

Close Prop.13 Commercial Property Tax Loophole.  $7 billion annually.

Repeal the 2008 California  tax cuts given to corporations. $ 1 billion.

Cut the military budget by 30%.   $420 billion (nationally.) California’s share would be $42 billion.

Details of these proposals are here. http://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/01/response-to-gov-browns-state-of-state.html

Things you can do :

Attend YDS/DSA conference, with Cornel West and others in NYC.  March 18-20. 

Their Crisis is Our Pain: The Democratic Socialists Response to the Great Recession. http://www.dsausa.org/yds/Mar2011/conference.html

Read. Inform yourself.  Join Sacramento DSA. https://sites.google.com/site/sacramentodsa/

Take Class Action.  Join the protests on April 13, 2011, at your nearest California State University campus.   Join with the  Campus Progressive Alliance to help to plan and carry out these demonstrations.

Defend Ethnic Studies.

Defend immigrant workers.

Students face a class struggle

At 2:29 p.m. on Jan. 12, Juan Macias, 19, a sophomore at San Francisco State University, sat in a cafe near the engineering firm where he works part time as an office assistant, staring at a laptop computer screen.

In one minute he would get a crucial opportunity to register for classes for the spring semester. “This is so nerve-wracking," he said as he waited for the clock to signal that his assigned registration period had begun.

Hours earlier, scrutinizing the class schedule, he considered about 30 courses — then had to rule all of them out. They were full. The last slot on the waiting list for a 146-seat introductory physics class he has been trying to join for a year had disappeared minutes before, taken by another student with an earlier registration period.

“You’re trying to compete with all the other students, when we all want education,” said Mr. Macias, a business major. “It really makes me angry.” His classes — the ones that had an opening — begin on Monday.

Welcome to state-run higher education in California. Mr. Macias is just one of more than 26,000 students at San Francisco State, and now educational opportunities cost more and are harder to grasp and even harder to hold onto than ever before. Mr. Macias’s experience of truncated offerings, furloughed professors and crowded classrooms is typical.

In 1960, he added, the state created “the gold standard in high-quality, low-cost public higher education. This year, the California legislature abandoned the gold standard.”

Because of state budget cuts to higher education, San Francisco State is now offering 3,173 course sections, 12 percent fewer than two years ago. From the university administration’s point of view, that is not as bad as it might have been: over $1.5 million in federal stimulus money prevented more draconian cuts.

The cutbacks enraged students. On Dec. 9, Mr. Macias was among the student activists who occupied the campus’s Business Building for 24 hours, canceling the classes held inside, including one he was taking. With a red sweater partially obscuring his face, he took to the roof with 11 other protesters, wielding a megaphone and leading chants.

When police broke up the occupation early the next morning, Mr. Macias, who had never participated in a protest before he went to San Francisco State, was arrested. On Jan. 26 he will go to court.

The chaos of trying to get into classes last fall spurred Mr. Macias. After budget cuts forced class cancellations, he had to take a week off work to attend 20 classes, as he tried to scrounge up enough units to keep his full-time status and maintain his financial aid.

Mr. Macias also felt the cuts in the classroom. In the fall, Don Menn, a lecturer in the journalism department since 1999, had taken pity on many students who, like Mr. Macias, were seeking to join his introductory course, Journalism and Mass Media. He let them all in, teaching 190 in a lecture hall that seats 148. Some sat on the floor.

But with no budget for a teaching assistant to help with grading, Mr. Menn had to slash the syllabus, canceling the midterm exam and the 10-page research paper. While in the past he had frequently given essay tests, this year all quizzes and the final were multiple choice.

“This is supposed to be a critical-thinking type class,” Mr. Menn said, “and here it was rote learning.”

Next year, students like Mr. Macias may face a further increase in fees. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget for 2010-11 includes a 10 percent fee increase for students at the California State University’s 23 campuses. He also proposed restoring $305 million to the state university system.

Mr. Macias’s education has already suffered. “Just worrying about having enough units to stay in school made me lose focus on my schoolwork,” he said.

Read the entire piece at;

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/education/24sfstudent.html?ref=education
There will be protest demonstrations at Sac State on Monday and Tues,  8- 10 Am. 

The Right to a great public education; California

We've got to stop cutting public education. To ease the budget crisis, one state after another is taking an ax to higher education. This is cruel and shortsighted.

Cruel because it denies students the right to a decent education. Shortsighted because how will this generation of students get prepared to compete globally or even to clean up the financial mess brought about by Wall Street?

I'm a product of the worst and best public education California has to offer. I grew up in an East Los Angeles housing project in the 1970s and 1980s. I attended overcrowded public schools in the inner city. Like many racial minorities from America's barrios and ghettos, I received an inadequate education.

While I excelled in mathematics, I was never taught to read or write at a competent level throughout my K-12 schooling. To complicate matters, the longest paper assigned to me in high school was two pages long.

I taught myself how to properly read and write while going through college to compensate for my poorly funded K-12 education. But what will happen to those without this same self-drive that I learned from my Mexican immigrant mother? Fortunately, I also benefited from affirmative action and from numerous educational outreach programs and policies like Occident College's Upward Bound - a preparatory program for students from disadvantaged communities.

If not for such programs, I wouldn't have made it to UCLA as an undergraduate. I wouldn't have earned a master's degree in urban planning there. And I wouldn't be pursuing my doctorate at Berkeley.

So I worry about those who grow up in poor neighborhoods without the same educational safety nets that allowed for me to attend some of the best universities in this country. I can't help but be concerned about the plight of my wife's elementary school students in East Los Angeles today.

Those who fight affirmative action and against government-sponsored early educational outreach programs conveniently wash their hands of any responsibility toward those who lack the financial resources and access to human capital to go to college.

And fewer and fewer have those resources, with one state after another raising tuition and other fees. These fee hikes couldn't come at a worse time.

If we care about equality of opportunity, if we are concerned about our ability to compete in the global economy, it's time to give everyone, including those from America's barrios and ghettos, a shot at a great public education.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Alvaro Huerta is a doctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center. He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine. Readers may write to the author at: Progressive Media Project, 409 East Main Street, Madison, Wis. 53703; e-mail: pmproj@progressive.org; Web site: www.progressive.org. For information on PMP's funding, please visit http://www.progressive.org/pmpabout.html#anchorsupport.

This article was prepared for The Progressive Media Project and is available to MCT subscribers.

Stealing from the Youth

Stealing From the Youth

by Joseph Palermo
There’s an ancient saying that we do not inherit our society from our ancestors, but borrow it from our children. On July 21, the California State University Board of Trustees approved a fee increase requiring undergraduate students this fall to pay $4,026 a year, an increase of about $1,000 over the previous year (and this fee hike came after years of previous increases). The fee hikes, the denial of enrollment to 40,000 students, the layoffs of faculty and staff, the budget cuts and furloughs, the stuffing of more students into fewer classes, etc. are all sacrificing California’s future for a short-term “fix” that in reality is not a “fix” at all. The 2010-2011 year will likely bring more bleak budgetary news. By blocking any new revenue streams to fund higher education, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Senate Republican minority are not only taxing California’s young people and their families, they are crippling the state’s future.
The degrees from CSU awarded during these furlough years might lead future employers to look upon them as suspect, perhaps even as inferior. The teachers, nurses, technicians, journalists, criminal justice professionals, and others we teach could have the quality of their training questioned. It’s not fair to the students and their families to be forced into buying an inferior product for grossly inflated prices. Students are paying more than ever for a CSU education even though they’ll be spending less time with professors, have fewer course offerings, and be crammed in overcrowded classrooms.
These budget cuts and student fee increases have gone on for years now, but 2009-2010 will be the cruelest year of all. In past budget cycles, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed and the Board of Trustees have responded with a shrug, saying simply: “We’ll manage.” Reed recently told the press that CSU is still a “bargain” compared to other institutions.
Really? A “bargain?” Or is it a bargain basement sell-off? Some students are transferring to other colleges that are more prestigious and only cost a little more in tuition.
There has been a profound lack of leadership among our elected officials in the state Capitol and in Long Beach, where the Chancellor and Trustees preside. Now the CSU administration has been finally forced to acknowledge that the latest round of devastating cuts will adversely affect the quality of education: “Cuts of this magnitude will naturally have consequences for the quality of the education we can provide,” a side letter to the furlough agreement states.
The California Faculty Association has stood and will continue to stand with students and their families. The record is clear. CFA has opposed every single increase in student fees whenever the issue has been raised in the Legislature. As a faculty organization we have consistently lobbied state legislators and the governor’s office to invest in California’s higher education. To that end we have voiced our strong support of Assembly Bill 656, sponsored by Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico (D-Fremont), because it is a sensible and fair effort to secure funding for the CSU. The Republican minority in the State Senate and our Republican governor squashed it, and by doing so they denied the necessary funding for the CSU system that would have helped us avoid what we are seeing today — cuts, furloughs, and fee hikes. (It’s a tax on CSU students and their families. The pay cut is also a tax on faculty and staff.)
In order NOT to tax ExxonMobile, Shell Oil, and other oil conglomerates that have made record profits in the tens of billions of dollars off California consumers in recent years, the Republicans blocked Torrico’s oil severance tax proposal that would have provided a billion dollars for higher education. They also blocked a tax on cigarettes that would have adverted cuts as well. And they did so for blind ideological reasons with a total disregard for what is in the best interest of the state of California. They sided with Big Oil and Big Tobacco to penalize college students who are just trying to increase their skill and knowledge levels to be productive members of the state’s workforce and to make California’s future as bright as its past.
Somebody should ask Governor Schwarzenegger and the Republicans in the Legislature why they insist on taxing students instead of oil and tobacco corporations. That’s why students were chanting outside the Chancellor’s office when he approved the fee hike: “TAX OIL, NOT STUDENTS!”
At his annual convocation to college staff and faculty, the president of CSU, Chico, Paul Zingg, pointed out that over the past 10 years state revenues have gone up while the percentage of the state general fund for higher education has gone down. Over the same time period general fund spending for prisons has gone from $5 billion to $11 billion. California spends about $50,000 per prisoner, and less than one-tenth of that to support a student in the CSU system. How can a state that spends more on prisons each year than on higher education create a better future for its citizens? President Zingg called it a “rejection of history and common sense.” “Education is as fundamental to our state as waterways, railroads, highways and the Internet,” he said.
It won’t be easy, but CSU professors can absorb these pay cuts and we will absorb them. We’ll manage. We’ll get by. We can take the hit as our faculty union voted in favor of doing so in the name of protecting higher education in California. CFA approved a 9.23 percent cut in our remuneration that will be reflected in a 9.23 percent reduction in our teaching activities. We’ve done our part.
The professors will endure. But the students and their families are the true victims here. They’re getting ripped off. CSU students are taking on extra jobs and piling on extra units to get through faster just to make ends meet. The quality of their education is suffering even while they go into debt, work long hours, and stretch themselves thin with heavy unit loads to obtain a degree. If it is true that we do not inherit our society from our ancestors, but borrow it from our children, then the current downsizing of the CSU system represents a wholesale larceny against our children and our future.
Joseph Palermo is Associate Professor of American History at CSU, Sacramento. He’s the author of two books on Robert F. Kennedy: In His Own Right (2001) and RFK (2008).

Posted with permission.

Rebuild our State Universities

Rebuild America. Rebuild our State Universities & Colleges.
A New Deal in the New Millennium for Higher Education
Resolution adopted by the California Faculty Delegates Assembly, October 19, 2008
A paradigm shift is sweeping the world. The historic financial crisis has created a broad new openness,
not seen for 25 years, to the idea that public institutions are a social good and government should play a
significant role in maintaining economic stability.
Yet, while Congress has infused massive amounts of American’s tax dollars in an attempt to staunch the
financial bleeding on Wall Street, it is not clear what commitment will be made to rebuild our human
infrastructure – to bail out the people of the United States.
We do know that broad access to quality higher education is a key ingredient to a positive outcome for
the American people. Educators and business leaders agree that the very survival of a strong U.S.
economy requires a highly educated work force.
Affordable, accessible, quality education is good for an individual’s personal finance, but more
importantly, it is good and essential for our society’s prosperity.
For years, the California Faculty Association has asserted, argued and demanded attention to and
proper funding for quality public higher education that is accessible and affordable for every Californian,
particularly in the California State University.
Yet for nearly two decades we have witnessed the persistent erosion of public support for our state
universities and colleges across the nation. In California, our state has cheated our students by
surreptitiously and gradually leaching away funding per student over the years. Any hope of relief was
undermined by enormous cuts in 2002 and 2003, totaling more than a half billion dollars in the CSU
alone.
We call on our elected leaders, nationally and here in California, to fundamentally change their thinking
about the role and funding of public higher education. It is unacceptable to praise the university on the
one hand while destroying it with the other; now we must reverse course and rebuild.
Today, we must think of the California State University, and all our nation’s public colleges and
universities, as solutions to a downward economic spiral.
Here in the CSU, just since October 1, there has been a 21% increase in applicants for the Fall 2009
school year. It is well documented that in periods of high unemployment, more people seek retraining
and more people rely on public universities. We need to invest in public higher education today so that
we don’t need to rescue millions of young people in the future.
The bail out of the banks in such a bold and massive way has revealed that we can afford to take
dramatic action when we have the will to do so.
A New Deal for a New Millennium that invests significant resources of similar size into public higher
education likewise could have a dramatic effect – if we can muster the will.
Consider this:
 $70 billion, just one-tenth of the amount of the Wall Street bailout, would nearly double the total
state funding allocated to higher education in the United States in 20071.
 $700 billion is more than ten times the size of the federal Dept. of Education Budget for 2007.2
 $700 billion would cover $20,000 in tuition and expenses in each of four years in school for 8.7
million California State University students.
 $700 billion would provide an additional $318,000 to spend on each of the 2.2 million students
enrolled in the public community colleges and universities in California last year.
 $700 billion could send 5.4 million students to a public university somewhere in the United States
this year.3
 For every $1 invested in the California State University, $4.41 is returned to our state economy.
The CSU contributes $7 billion to California’s economy – revenue we cannot afford to part with
given the deep deficit we already face.4
A crisis of this magnitude calls for bold action. That is why we call on our nation’s leaders to:
 Initiate a “New Deal in the New Millennium for Higher Education” to get our people into college
and to keep them there all the way to a degree. We propose a federal program for higher
education in the amount of $70 billion -- just 10 percent of what our nation is spending on Wall
Street and the banks.
 Establish college-going grants similar to the World War II G.I. Bill, and student loan debt
forgiveness for all students who take jobs in public service. Public financial aid should be
provided to rescue our students from the hands of private financial institutions.
We also call on California’s lawmakers and higher education policy makers to:
 Join us in our call for a “New Deal in a New Millennium for Higher Education” that will enable us
to rebuild the California State University and the other segments of our state’s public higher
education system.
 Restore the $215 million cut from the CSU budget in the 2008/09 state budget. And work to add
funding above the minimal levels established in Gov. Schwarzenegger’s funding promises in
future years. A real commitment will yield real results for California and the nation.
 Reopen the doors to the 10,000 students who were turned away this year due to budget cuts.
New graduates and unemployed adults alike need opportunity to become tax paying participants
in California.
 Roll back tuition and fees to 2002 levels before the intensive period of fees increases began that
now total 113%. We can’t afford to block students from getting an education because they can’t
afford to pay.
Furthermore, we call on our colleagues in universities and colleges across the nation to
 Join with us in working for and inaugurating this “New Deal in a New Millennium” to rebuild public
higher education in America.
###


REFERENCES
1
Grapevine, “An annual compilation of data on state tax appropriations for the general operation of higher education,”
www.grapevine.ilstu.edu
2
US Department of Education, www.ed.gov
3
Columbia Journalism Review, “What Can You Buy for $700 Billion?” 9/23/08, www.cjr.org
4
ICF Consulting, “Working for California: The Impact of the California State University,” 2005.