CA Budget Held Hostage for Tax Increases

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
From the Los Angeles Times

State Democrats determined to raise taxes