Los Angeles teachers are finally striking for the first hour of today's school day against the budget cuts to education; the rest of labor needs to join them in a statewide general strike not only against budget cuts but also against the refusal of the state legislature to raise the income taxes on the rich, the 5% that makes over $200,000 a year, including the millionaires and billionaires who live in California.
The announcement is on AP and in the San Francisco Chronicle, 6/6/08, at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/06/05/state/n101339D86.DTL&hw=Los+Angeles+teachers&sn=001&sc=1000
This is the 30th anniversary of the infamous Proposition 13 of June 1978, cutting property taxes and all the social services they paid for, with no immediate increase on the progressive income tax on the richest 5% of the population. The horrifying legacy of this proposition, which caused California schools to go from being No. 1 to No. 48 in the nation, is described by Richard Boggs in the San Francisco Chronicle of 6/6/08 at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/06/EDJI113PIF.DTL It may have been approved to help some seniors, but workingclass seniors are tenants who are seriously injured by Proposition 13, and its corresponding lack of increase of the progressive income tax on the rich as there is no affordable housing for the workingclass, those of us who sell our labor for less than $76,000 a year, usually much less. Housing permits are down as there are no more luxury housing loans and the banks are not loaning money for workingclass housing; that money must come from the federal budget, which since December 7, 1941 has been dedicated to putting guns before butter as maximization of profits is the primary goal and law of this backward bankrupt society, and the biggest profits are in war profiteering, courtesy both the Democrats and Republicans, the twin parties of war and fascism.
Millionaire warmonger death penalty promoters like Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and John McCain have nothing to offer the workingclass. Peace and Freedom Party, a socialist party on the California ballot, does. See
http://peaceandfreedom.org/home/