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Hydra Mendoza Speaks at S. F. Rally to Defend Public Education

by Jonathan Nack
Hydra Mendoza, President of the San Francisco Board of Education, was one of the speakers at a rally to defend education in S. F., May 13, 2011. (00:02:24)
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Hydra Mendoza Speaks at S. F. Rally to Defend Public Education
Civic Center, S. F., CA, May 13 2011
Video length: 2 min. 24 sec.

Several thousand teachers, parents, and students rallied to defend public education at Civic Center, San Francisco, CA, on May 13, 2011. Hydra Mendoza, President of the San Francisco Board of Education, was one of the speakers who addressed a fired up crowd of several thousand.

Videography & Photography: Jonathan Nack
Editing and titles: Jonathan Nack

Produced in Oakland, CA

*Use of this video by commercial for profit publications without the express consent of Jonathan Nack is prohibited.

Related article at CaStateofEmergency.com : http://castateofemergency.com/?p=1011
§Hydra Mendoaza at Rally to Defend Public Education
by Jonathan Nack
640_dscf2143.jpg
Hydra Mendoza, President of the San Francisco Board of Education, at rally to defend public education following her speech.
Civic Center, S. F., CA
May 13, 2011

Photo: Jonathan Nack
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by reality check
she's a terrible public speaker, yelling the same old boring BS about the political system that she is a part of as a former 'aide' to Mayor Newsom. What has she done as a school board member? Did she call for ending the regressive taxes and raising taxes on millionaires like Democrat Jerry Brown?

the whole rally was a lame display of the same tired 'leaders' trying to convince the rank and file that they should fall in line behind the ass backwards talking points about 'let us vote to raise taxes on the poor' while never mentioning the need for a General Strike and a break from the corporate Democrats.

Thankfully the Peace and Freedom Party was there to offer a progressive alternative.

Dissident union members who do not support regressive taxes should have been part of the program; instead we get folks who offer platitudes and begging the ruling class to allow the working class to negotiate away benefits and rights.
by Lessons Of History
This rally was organized to pitch the bankrupt political line that the CTA tops are pushing. The Republicans are bad and the Democrats really support labor and want to do the right thing. This idiocy was on display at the SF rally when instead of demanding that the Democrats go after the 84 billionaires in California and 18 in San Francisco the main focus was to the the Republicans to do the right thing. This idea that it is just bad politicians when we have a system problem is another example of how they are misleading the membership of the CTA.
They also kept Betty Olson-Jones, president of the OEA who is somewhat more militant off the platform until most people had left the rally. This rally was controlled by a pro-capitalist Democratic party machine who are more interested in doing damage control for the Democrats than taking on the capitalists and their lackeys the Democrats in the legislature. In fact, the next day we hear that their hero Jerry Brown wants no more new taxes in 2011 while he is butchering public services.

Gov. Brown to skip tax increase this year as he closes 70 California State Parks

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-state-budget-20110514,0,1139364.story
Gov. Brown to skip tax increase this year
The governor will scale back a plan for more taxes in his revised budget after a surge in revenue, officials say. But 70 California state parks are slated for closure.

(126)

In March, Gov. Jerry Brown enacted 13 bills that aimed to cut $11.2 billion from California's budget deficit. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images / March 24, 2011)

By Shane Goldmacher and Anthony York, Los Angeles Times
May 14, 2011
Reporting from Sacramento -- A surge in revenue has prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to scale back his proposal for more taxes, even as his administration on Friday announced its intention to close 70 state parks.

Officials familiar with Brown's plans said the revised budget he presents Monday will propose raising income tax rates on Californians for four years rather than the five he initially wanted. The higher rate would not take effect until 2012.

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The governor will continue to push for a five-year extension of increases in sales taxes and vehicle fees that are due to expire by July 1, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not been made public. Brown wants lawmakers to put some levies in place before July 1, to be ratified later by voters, the officials said.

The governor would use an unexpected multibillion-dollar influx of tax receipts to fill the gap left in his budget by the shorter period of income tax increases. He would also use the new money to keep in place "enterprise zone" tax credits for businesses that hire workers from blighted areas. Brown originally proposed eliminating those tax credits to save the state $924 million.

But the revenue boost was not enough to save 70 parks that the administration said it was planning to close. They include the Salton Sea State Recreation Area, Palomar Mountain State Park in San Diego County, McGrath State Beach in Ventura County, Los Encinos State Park, Antelope Valley Indian Museum, Pio Pico State Park in Whittier and Fort Tejon State Historic Park in Kern County.

Northern California parks on the list include Candlestick Point State Recreation Area in San Francisco and Point Cabrillo Light Station in Mendocino.

State lawmakers passed $33 million in cuts from the parks budget earlier this year, but Brown has not signed them into law. Whether the closures will be included in a final budget is unclear, because the spending plan is still being negotiated. Administration officials said they did not intend to alter the parks budget further, and Republicans said they were taking Brown's plan seriously.

Brown also announced Friday a proposal to scrap the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which has long been a lucrative landing place for former lawmakers, with salaries in six figures. Six of the seven current board members are ex-legislators appointed by their former colleagues or past governors.

The announcements about parks and the unemployment board appeared timed to show voters that Brown is doing all he can to tighten the state's belt while making difficult cuts before he asks them to agree to higher taxes.

In his January budget proposal, Brown pressed lawmakers to call a June election asking voters to approve renewed tax hikes for five years. But talks in the Legislature failed.

His revised budget will drop the income tax surcharge for the 2011 calendar year, said those with knowledge of the governor's plan. The tax would have generated about $2 billion to help fill a $15-billion deficit.

Roughly $2.5 billion in unanticipated tax revenue poured into state coffers in the first four months of 2011, and forecasters suggest billions more could materialize. The unforeseen income is expected to cover the dropped taxes in the governor's new plan.

In January, Brown proposed lowering the income tax credit for those with dependents to $99 instead of the approximately $300-per-dependent credit allowed by current law. It was unclear whether he plans to alter that proposal Monday.

Brown's decision to retain enterprise-zone credits comes amid Republican opposition and an active campaign by businesses and others who hired multiple public relations firms and spent $130,000 on lobbying in the first three months of this year.

Gil Duran, Brown's spokesman, declined to comment on any budget details, saying the full plan would be announced Monday.

The Brown administration did say Friday that whatever taxes are ultimately approved, they probably won't prevent the first round of state park closures in California history. Among the most popular services provided by the state, parks have been used as bargaining chips in past budget debates but none were closed.

In crafting the list of targeted parks, Brown administration officials said they tried to spare those that have the highest number of visitors, generate the most money in usage fees and have historical value.

Existing campground reservations will not be affected, since all parks will remain open this summer, said Ruth Coleman, the director of the Department of Parks and Recreation. But she said properties across the state would be subject to "service reductions" as soon as this summer.

Fewer lifeguards, fewer trash collectors and fewer available public restrooms would be among the cutbacks, she said.

Department spokesman Tony Perez said state officials are seeking help from local governments or private vendors to try to keep the parks open.

"Now that the list is out, it gives us an opportunity to talk about partnerships," he said.

shane.goldmacher [at] latimes.com

anthony.york(at)latimes.com

by repost
Why the Democratic Party is Corporate Lickspittle
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff05132011.html
May 13 - 15, 2011

Numbers Racket

Why the Democratic Party is Corporate Lickspittle

By DAVE LINDORFF

A new Gallup Poll conducted for USA Today earlier this week reports that a majority of Americans (52%) say that they would prefer a third party instead of the two parties, Republican and Democrat, that have dominated American politics for nearly centuries.

The poll shows that one third of Democrats say there's a need for a new political party, while 52% of Republicans say the same thing. Meanwhile, 68% of independents say they have no use for either Democrats or Republicans and would prefer another option (no surprise there--that's why they are not registered with either of the two major parties).

Of course, the Third Party envisioned by these various groups is hardly the same. Most of the dissatisfied Democrats are almost certainly in the party's left wing, and are people who would prefer a more left-leaning, socialist party. Most of the reluctant Republicans are probably either libertarians who can't stomach the Republican Party's corporatist stance and its fondness for police state tactics and invasion of personal freedoms, or else they are the rabid right that prefers the kooky conspiracy-driven politics of the Becks, Limbaughs, Bachmans and Palins. As for the independents, there are certainly leftists, rightists, isolationists, globalists, libertarians and kooks among them enough to populate ten new parties.

That's one reason why we still have just two parties winning all the elections. Some of these dissatisfied citizens just hold their noses and vote for the party that is less likely to make them projectile vomit in the voting booth. Others, unable to vote for either major party's candidates without soiling the equipment, just don't vote. And then there are a few stalwarts who insist on doing their civic duty, march in and vote for the Constitution Party or the Libertarians or the Greens or the Socialist Workers, or they write in Mickey Mouse. The rest just don't vote, which is why the US has one of the lowest participation rates in elections of nearly any of the world's nominal democracies.

It's possible that this latest poll could be signaling some kind of tectonic political event ahead. Perhaps the incongruous collection of Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce crowd and the bible thumpers, racists, misogynists and neo-fascists who populate the Republican voter rolls will finally turn on each other and split into two or three smaller units.

But what about the Democrats? What will it take for the 33% of party stalwarts who think the party is the pits to give up hope of reforming it and pulling it to the left? What will it take for the working class that has for generations given its votes to the party's smarmy candidates, hoping against hope for the best, to finally walk away from the stinking corpse that is the Democratic Party and form the base of an American Labor Party?

Maybe a closer look at who's really buying the Democratic Party and its candidates would do the trick.

Year after year, the country's labor unions collect money from their members and give it to candidates for Congress -- candidates who pretend to be the working man's and working woman's friend, but who after election do the bidding of Wall Street and Main Street.

Here's why. Even most of the the most liberal members of the Democratic Congressional delegation get most of their campaign swag not from the unions, but from large corporate interests, and that tidal wave of corporate cash simply washes away any good that the union donations might have done.

Check it out.

Take Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich), the ranking minority member and former chair of the House Judiciary Committee. A leading member of the House Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, and surely one of the most liberal members of Congress, Conyers according to the website OpenSecrets.org, in the latest reporting cycle, didn't list one union among his top five contributors. Instead, occupying those top spots were the National Beer Wholesalers Assn. ($56,000), the Law Offices of Peter G. Angelos ($33,600), the corporate law firm of Akin, Gump ($15,102) and Intellectual Ventures LLC ($12,500) a venture capital firm. Over all, the top five corporate donors to Conyers were: lawyers and law firms ($129,102), the entertainment industry ($84,591), the Computer/Internet industry ($78,283), the Beer, Wine and Liquor industry ($77,699) and various industry lobbyists ($52,680).

Labor's PAC donations to Conyers (a total of $107,520) shrink to almost insignificance compared to the $335,000 donated by various industry PACs, including $140,524 from the Communications industry alone.

Or check out Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif), the House minority leader and former Speaker, portrayed as practically a Bolshevik by the country's right-wing punditry. There's only one labor organization in her list of top-10 contributors, and that's the AFL-CIO, which is Number 10 with $10,000, behind Law Offices of Peter Angelos ($43,200), Bryan Cave LLP ($34,950), Johnson & Johnson ($22,200), Gallo Winery ($12,000), Microsoft Corp. ($12,000), Blue Cross/Blue Shield ($11,500), Google ($11,000), and New York Life ($11,000). Unions only represent two of Pelosi's 20 top contributors. Looking at the former Speaker's PAC money by sector or industry, labor and working people only come in at rank number five and nine, with retirees contributing $107,150 and public sector unions donating another $78,500. The other 10 big donating sectors are: Health Professionals ($253,700), Lawyers ($203,600), Lobbyists ($125,350), Securities and Investment Industry ($109,200), Real Estate ($105,800), the Pro-Israel Lobby ($89,700), Pharmaceutical Industry ($86,300) and Hollywood ($76,950). Just focusing on Pelosi's biggest contributors, once again, that's $1,050,000 from big industries and the rich vs. $185,650 from the people -- a ratio of almost 6:1.


But why single out a couple of these supposed people's tribunes? Why not check out the whole Democratic Party? In the 2010 election cycle, OpenSecrets.org reports that the Democrats raised $210 million in funds subject to disclosure, and another $9.2 million, the sources of which it does not have to disclose. The top four PAC donors to this stash were not labor unions. They were the National Assn. of Realtors ($3.8 million), Honeywell International ($3.7 million), the National Beer Wholesalers Assn. ($3.3 million), and AT&T ($3.3 billion). Only at number five do we find a labor union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers ($3.0 million). Rounding out the top 10 PAC donors to the "party of working people," we have the American Bankers Assn. ($2.9 million), the American Trial Lawyers Assn. ($2.8 million), the Operating Engineers Union ($2.8 million), and the National Auto Dealers Assn. ($2.5 million). Unless you count the American Trial Lawyers Assn. as "working people," this means that among their top ten donors, the Dems took in $22.3 million from corporate interests and lawyers, and $5.8 million from workers' unions. So whose interests is a party like that going to be serving.

Not all the members of Congress are on the hook to American corporate interests and the rich. But the number who aren't probably can be counted on one or two hands. People like Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (independent socialist-Vermont) show what true working people's candidates ought to look like. Kucinich's top five contributors are all labor unions, and looking at a breakdown by interest group or industry, the largest contributor is retirees, followed by three labor unions and then by lawyers. Kucinich did take in some money from PACs representing the Finance, Real Estate and Insurance industry ($7000), Healthcare ($3500), lawyers ($7500) and the Transportation industry ($1,000), but their combined contributions are dwarfed by the $114,000 contributed to Kucinich by labor PACs. That's a ratio of 1:5.

Similarly, the socialist Sanders counts three labor unions among his top five contributors, these being the International brotherhood of Electrical Workers ($18,500), the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union ($17,000) and the Communications Workers of America ($16,250). The other two contributors rounding out Sanders' top five list were eScription Inc. ($25,200) and Baron & Budd ($18,500).

Not surprisingly, both Rep. Kucinich and Sen. Sanders have been unwavering backers of the interests of working people and their labor unions.

In what could perhaps be a hopeful sign of the future, the 11th biggest donor to the Democrats, the International Association of Fire Fighters, which last year gave the party $2.4 million through its PAC, announced that it was no longer going to be a campaign contributor to the Democrats, having decided that the Party was not defending the firefighters' interests. Saying that the firefighters and "all public workers" were under attack by "Tea Party politicians," this union, in a public announcement, said, "Too few Democrats are standing up and fighting for us." As a result, it is "turning off the spigot." If other unions, like the two big teachers unions, the AFT and the NEA, would take similar action and pull away their financial support for the Democrats, perhaps we could see a real Labor Party spring up as a political alternative to the two corporate parties. If that ever does happen, we could also see the Democratic whither away and die a deserving and long-overdue death.

Meanwhile we're kind of stuck. Voters will keep telling pollsters they're sick of both parties, and both parties will continue to run the country into the ground in the interests of the rich and powerful.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-supported (supposedly!) online alternative newspaper.
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