Education or Pensions: we don't have to choose, we can have both. Pittsburgh Penn. wants to tax students and blames workers for it.

I am a retied public sector worker.  Compared to most working class people I am very lucky. I have a decent defined benefit pension.  However, after a successful rout of pensions, wages and job security in the private sector, the employers have public sector workers in their sights.

I have not one ounce of guilt about my good pension; everyone should have it.  The canceling of the $30 billion ($1,000,000 per person, that Obama is spending of our money for their predatory war in Afghanistan would be a good place to start for funding of such a project.

The crooks who brought the economy to the edge of the abyss and were saved by public hand outs always use their media and their political parties (the Democrats) to divide working people and have us tear at each others throats for access to funds.  They are unfortunately helped in this by the heads of organized Labor, who have no independent views from the employers and end up recommending solutions to the crisis that strengthens the employers divide and rule strategy.

Last summer I had attended numerous school board meetings that were packed with parents and teachers as well as students who were there to protest the draconian cuts in education.  At each of the school board meetings the local Unions (all belonging to the same statewide organization and affiliated to the largest Union in the country, the NEA) representing the teachers put forward or suggested as a solution, increases in homeowner taxes, parcel tax increases. 

With the exception of anti-tax right wing types I recall being the only person that opposed this. It is a solidarity destroying measure that naturally all the politicians support; it divides the working class.  Many people are on the verge of losing their homes and cannot afford and will resist tax increases.  They will also resent that a Union is championing such a measures.  Another important point is that it will also not solve the crisis in education; it accepts there is no money in society despite massive evidence to the contrary and is simply a band aid till the next crisis occurs.

The importance of public sector workers like myself standing with students and all working class people under attack is that our pensions are now on the chopping block and we need a untied movement to stop it; one that combats their divide and rule tactics.

Pittsburgh Pennsylvania is an example.  The city is proposing a 1% tuition tax on college students.  Students are rightly enraged at this and have protested the proposal at the City Council meetings. The tax, referred to as a "Post Secondary Education Privilege Tax" is justified officials say because the students use city services, roads, fires dept. etc.

And what reason is being given for taxing students for their tuition and enraging them so?  Why, public worker's pensions of course.  The city's pension liabilities are grossly underfunded.  The war in Iraq is not blamed, not the trillions swindled out of the US taxpayer, not the escalation in Afghanistan, not the billion in bonuses paid to social parasites like currency traders or the 25 hedge fund managers that made $15 billion between them in 2006.

A worker's retirement wage is blamed.

This is not an accident. The anger that is inevitable give the nature of the tax has to be diverted away from those who are responsible for it; the capitalist class. their imperialist ventures and failed economic system; the students would be fine if it wasn't for those lazy, expensive public sector workers who can retire early and on enough money to live on. They also blamed auto workers pay for the collapse of General Motors; it's all a lie, and Democrats participate in it.

I was active in my Union for 25 years. At the highest levels of the movement, the leadership do not challenge this strategy of the employers, accepts that there is a dwindling pot of money available, and joins with them in setting one section of the working class against another as they search for a source of funds. They continue to support the Democrat Party in the political arena rather than build an independent working class alternative.

California's student movement that has risen as a consequence of the fee hikes at the state's university system must not make the same mistake.  The movement, any movement, must demand what we need not what the employers, the Wall Street Journal, the Democrats, and, unfortunately, the Labor leaders say is realistic.  Instead of demands that divide us, we must bring all under attack in to the movement. We must reject the idea in our own minds that there is an economic crisis; Goldman Sachs has no crisis.

Rather than pit workers pensions against students education we must demand and fight for Federally funded education through all levels for all, including immigrants, undocumented or not. And for retirement at 50 with no less income than while working and a disposable income of no less than 50% of the total after rent,mortgage food etc.  This sort of approach unites us rather than divides us, it unites us in our efforts to wrest from the capitalist class the wealth we create and ultimately the control over how that wealth is created and how we use it for the benefit of society.