Jerry Brown wants to "impose" taxes on Californians to "save" education.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports this morning that California’s deficit has declined by some $5 billion due to increased revenues from an expanding economy. The revenues are primarily from increased taxes from upper earners which shows which section of society is expanding.

Jerry Brown, the state’s Democratic governor was going to put the issue of increasing taxes to the voters but now plans to seek “approval from the legislature to impose” them. He is feeling quite confident eliminating voters rights as the president of the teachers' Union in California and numerous other top Union officials support this position as we pointed out in an earlier blog.

Brown, the Democrats and the top trade Union leaders have all been painting a horrific scene if Californian’s don’t vote to lower our disposable income through higher taxes. The taxes are needed to “save” education. There will be “massive “ cuts in education, public safety and social services if workers and the middle class don’t cough up; it will be our fault. This is the line we hear time after time. We have saved nothing we have only gone backwards. If we vote to cut our disposable income education will be “saved” will be kept in its present inadequate state for another year or two then it will have to be “saved” again and we know who will be asked to "save" it.

Brown, the candidate of the Labor leaders in the state has made no issue of taxing oil as it comes from the ground.  California is the only state that does not do this.

The coercion and economic terrorism is intense. If we don’t cough up, estimates claim Brown and the corporate politicians will cut $5 billion to public schools, cut $1 billion from the University of California and California State University systems as well as cut fire protection, public parks, health and human services.

Do these men represent your aspirations?

This is from the capitalist party that claims to be the party of the people; it the former party of the Southern Slaveocracy. The other party of Wall Street, the Republicans, has basically the same agenda except deeper cuts and no or fewer tax increases. These are the choices workers and the middle class are left with in a so-called democracy, cut services or pay more taxes.

Jim Nielsen, a Republican State Assembleyman is cautiously optimistic about his Democratic colleagues' assault on the American working class but reminds us that the plan will still “grow government by 31%.”. “In these tough times I don’t think the citizens of California will embrace having government grow…Raising taxes will only encourage profligate spending.”

They love that word, “profligate”. This is what my dictionary says about profligate:
(1) utterly and shamelessly immoral or dissipated; thoroughly dissolute.
(2). recklessly prodigal or extravagant.

The representatives of Wall Street in these two parties consider spending on education, social services, decent housing and public transportation “profligate”. $4 trillion to bankers, $3 trillion invading countries on behalf of the energy and other industries is not “profligate” to them. It all depends on one’s class point of view.

We don’t have to passively accept the shifting of the crisis of society on to our backs, on to the backs of workers and the middle class. We have the power and social weight to stop them. We don’t have to emulate the top leaders of the workers organizations who cower at their feet and refuse to fight them.

I have written many times about the emerging English capitalist class that challenged the feudal aristocracy in the form of Charles 1st in the mid 17th century. The historian Christopher Hill wrote that as heroic as these people were, including religious dissenters like Bunyan who served 11 years in jail for his views, they couldn’t get over what Hill called the “stop in the mind”. He was referring to the acceptance in their own consciousness of the prevailing ideology of the day----“The Divine Right of Kings.” It’s hard to challenge, let alone remove a social structure and it’s human representatives if you believe that its origins are divine.

Cromwell and others tried something different, “Let’s cut off his head” they said, “and we’ll see what happens.”  A bold move, but lo and behold, a new day is born. We are in a similar situation. Why do we passively accept this war that is being waged against our very existence, against our living standards, rights and desires for a secure and safe future? Why do we buy their nonsense about the rest of the world hating us and US capitalism being a force for democracy and freedom in the world?  We have to overcome our own fear that if we act only chaos awaits. There is no god given right that states 90 Californians can be billionaires and the rest of us can go to hell. There is nothing that says that 400 Americans should have more wealth than 155 million of the rest of us. There is no divine right of capitalists to steal everything that isn't nailed down and to not do any productive work.

Trillions of dollars of our money is wasted massacring human beings throughout the world, a million Iraqi’s for example, three million Vietnamese. The world is awash with cash, as the Wall Street Journal has repeatedly said. There are numerous examples of where the money is on this blog. The problem is that they have it, a small group of people who have no right to it and no right to govern.

One important step we must take is the building of an independent political party of our own, a mass workers party that would draw to it all the victims of Wall Street and global capitalism including small community businesses and other sections of the middle class crushed under the weight of corporations.

The likes of Brown and others are confident they can do what they want and the American working class will accept it forever.  History proves otherwise but by passively accepting the solutions put forward by the two political parties of capital and their allies atop organized Labor we’re digging a deeper hole for ourselves that makes the coming battles much harder than they need be.

The youth have shown what must be done if we want a future. Mass action, a fight to win strategy which means stopping production, preventing profit taking, this is what hurts them. Most of all we must demand what we need; we must raise our expectations and ignore their nonsense about no money or what society can and cannot afford. We must present a different face and different American ideals to the rest of the world  than those of George Bush, Barack Obama or Bill Gates and other representatives of this den of thieves. 

It’s time to overcome that “stop in the mind”