Inside Job Trailer 2010 HD

We viewed the film on Friday sponsored by the Progressive Alliance and DSA.  It is a great video.

Many viewers were frustrated.  They asked- well what can we do?

I made a list of possible responses.  I encourage additional ideas.

10 Things you and I can do to turn this state around.

1.     Vote against the Republicans.

2.     Search for progressive Democrats.

3.     Talk to your neighbors about the issues.

4.     Shut off Fox News.

5.     Move your money to a credit union.

6.     Join a union.  Or, a union support group. www.aflcio.org, http://www.workingamerica.org/join/

CTA members arrested in California Capitol- State of Emergency

A Highway Patrol officer prepares to take into custody the first 14 Capitol Insiders who refused to leave the building when so directed slightly after 6PM on Thursday evening. These 14 placed themselves outside the offices of Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway, saying they would stay there until she provided a budget proposal that would protect schools.

Among those the Highway Patrol began arresting for trespassing are (from l.) Barbara Franklin, Miriam Aguilar Escobar, and CTA Board Member Theresa Montano.

Meanwhile, at Senate Republican Leader Bob Dutton’s office, CTA President David A. Sanchez and other Capitol Insiders were reportedly also being taken into custody by law enforcement officers for refusing to leave until the Senator presented an acceptable budget that included an extension of the state’s temporary taxes.

The arrests came on the day that the Assembly Republicans released a budget proposal that would slash nearly $500 million more from public education.

“Basta, basta (enough, enough),” said CTA Member Aguilar Escobar to Spanish language media prior to her arrest.
Join the teachers in a support rally.  Friday. 4 - 6 PM. Sacramento State Capitol.

State of emergency protests begin in Sacramento

Almost 800 teachers and their supporters rallied in Sacramento today and marched to the state capitol to demand that the legislature pass a budget that adequately funds the schools.

Scores of protests, rallies, teacher sit-ins and grade-ins, and town halls are part of a statewide “State of Emergency” campaign week of actions  launched Monday by the California Teachers Association (NEA) CTA and a coalition of all of organized labor and parent supporters calling on the Legislature to extend current taxes now to avoid the catastrophe of an all-cuts budget.

“We are living in a state of emergency,” said David A. Sanchez, president of the 325,000-member California Teachers Association. “Educators, parents and community leaders are fighting back against state budget cuts that are decimating our schools, public safety and health care services. To protect essential public services, the Legislature must finish the job of resolving the state budget crisis by extending current tax rates legislatively. Time is running out for our students and our communities.”

Educators are fed up with endless cuts and will be holding daily sit-ins at the Capitol building in Sacramento. In the past three years, K-12 and higher education have been cut by more than $20 billion. An all-cuts state budget would add another $4 billion in education cuts, the state’s nonpartisan legislative analyst warns. CTA supported the governor’s call for a June special election to extend taxes, but Republican  lawmakers hijacked the process and blocked that vote. The time to protect the revenue we have is now.

Events this week will   show the impacts of budget cuts on students and our communities.  Rallies will be held in  5  California cities on Friday, culminating in a march on the capitol and a potential occupation of the California Capitol.

The campaign website is www.castateofemergency.com and features events planned statewide, along with blogs, videos and news coverage about cuts and the growing crisis in California.

What is similar to the occupations in Wisconsin and the demonstrations in Ohio and Indiana?

Education: State of Emergency- Mobilize!

It's time for lawmakers to finally get the problem solved now

Media Resources

Free Film - Inside Job

The Friday Night Film Series Proudly Presents

Inside Job

Oscar Winner – Best Documentary

Followed by a stimulating discussion with Dr. Duane Campbell, Chair of the Sacramento  chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America

Free Film!  Free Popcorn!  Free Drinks!

Friday, May 13, 2011

 Hinde Auditorium

Sac State University Union

 Shorts--6:00pm   Feature Film--6:30pm

"Four Stars! An angry, well argued documentary."  -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"A powerhouse of a documentary that will leave you both thunderstruck and boiling with rage." 

-- Kenneth Turan, LA Times

"This cogent, devastating synopsis is the definitive indictment of the titans who swindled America and of their pals in the federal government who enabled them.”

-- Mary & Richard Corliss, Time Magazine

Event Info: paulb1221@sbcglobal.net

Movie Info: http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/

Free Fall- Educational opportunities in California

Summary from the new report of UCLA Accord Center:
California Educational Opportunity Report.

Core Findings from our Surveys and Interviews:

• California high schools are providing less time and attention and fewer quality programs. As a consequence, student

engagement, achievement, and progress to graduation and college are suffering;

• School reform has all but sputtered to a halt due to staff cutbacks and the elimination of time for professional development;

• Even as high schools across the state are impacted by declining budgets, inequality is growing across and within schools;

• California’s high schools face growing demands from families experiencing economic crisis; these demands point to the interrelationship

of California’s education and social welfare budgets.

Rogers, J., Bertrand, M., Freelon, R., Fanelli, S. (2011). Free Fall: Educational Opportunities in 2011.

Los Angeles: UCLA IDEA, UC /ACCORD.

To access this report online, please visit http://www.edopp.org

We need an emergency jobs program now !

            We need an emergency jobs program now.

Unemployment and underemployment remain at crisis levels. We need jobs—and we need them now.  Wall Street has gotten its bailouts. Now it’s past time for Main Street to get some immediate help.

Counties, states and cities  are again cutting services; police, fire, health care.  And the state has cut k-12 education and higher education and now will cut more if Republicans continue to block  tax extension on the rich.  These cuts are a direct result of the looting of the economy by finance capital  in the economic crisis.

            At the same time,  GE, Bank of America, Exxon, etc. manages to evade taxes while off-shoring jobs.   In a struggling economy, these companies obtain tax refunds, while bringing in billions (GE earned 14.2 billion and received a tax benefit of 3.2 billion).  Offshore tax havens, tax loopholes and tax breaks (tax expenditures), allow these corporations to rake in billions while you and I   struggle to pay our  taxes. 

            And the shell game goes on –

Taxes have been progressively lowered on the upper 1%, starting with Reagan and continuing to the point where Warren Buffett famously observed that he paid taxes at a lower rate than his secretary.  The justification for these cuts, entirely unsupported by  evidence, is that jobs are created.  In this upward distribution of wealth, 1% of the population tripled their share of after-tax percentage of our nation’s total income from 1980 to 2006, and captured 75% of the economy’s growth between 2002 and 2006 (Buchheit, DePaul University). Meanwhile, the bottom 90% saw their share drop 90%.

            It is past time to tax the corporations and the rich.  We should collect fair taxes and pay for vital services first; fire, police, schools, health care, etc. 

It's time for lawmakers to finally get the problem solved now

• Attend a Rally
 
• Contact Your Lawmaker
 
• Spread the Word

Economic Hitmen

May Day : Born in the U.S.A,

May Day.  Born in the U.S.A.  by Michael Hirsch

For generations, May Day, the International Workers Day celebrated by working people in more than 200 countries, was ignored in the United States, the country of its origin. In fact, the annual holiday is as American as cherry pie, commemorating as it does the 1886 nationwide general strike in which U.S. trade unionists — largely foreign-born — walked off the job in support of an eight-hour workday.

This year’s observance marks the 125th anniversary of that campaign to humanize the workday — and of the tragedy at Chicago’s Haymarket Square that followed three days later. New Yorkers will mark the day in a rally in support of labor and immigrant rights in lower Manhattan’s Foley Square. < editor. in New York City>

Back in 1886, when the typical work day was 10, 12 or even 14 hours long and joblessness was rife, the demand for a work day limited to eight hours at decent wages was viewed as dangerously radical. The eight-hour-day movement was spearheaded by two organizations, the craft-dominated Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (the forerunner of the American Federation of Labor) and the Knights of Labor.

Financial crisis- Republicans protect the bankers

Springtime for Bankers

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last year the G.O.P. pulled off two spectacular examples of bait-and-switch campaigning. Medicare, where the same people who screamed about death panels are now trying to dismantle the whole program, was the most obvious. But the same thing
happened with regard to financial reform.

As you may recall, Republicans ran hard against bank bailouts. Among other things, they managed to convince a plurality of voters that the deeply unpopular bailout legislation proposed and passed by the Bush administration was enacted on President Obama’s watch.

And now they’re doing everything they can to ensure that there will be even bigger bailouts in years to come.

What does it take to limit future bailouts? Declaring that we’ll never do it again is no answer: when financial turmoil strikes, standing aside while banks fall like dominoes isn’t an option. After all, that’s what policy makers did in 1931, and the resulting banking crisis turned a mere recession into the Great Depression.

And let’s not forget that markets went into free fall when the Bush administration let Lehman Brothers go into liquidation. Only quick action — including passage of the much-hated bailout — prevented a full replay of 1931.

So what’s the solution? The answer is regulation that limits the frequency and size of financial crises, combined with rules that let the government strike a good deal when bailouts become necessary.

Parents group calls for reform of NCLB

Parents across America. Our proposals to reform NCLB

The US Congress is considering how to revise No Child Left Behind, the Bush-era version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the most important federal law that governs our public schools.  NCLB has been extremely damaging in the eyes of most parents, and needs fundamental reform.  Unfortunately, the Obama administration plans to make it worse in many respects.

Parents Across America has developed our own blueprint, based upon less testing and privatization, more parent input, and a greater emphasis on evidenced-based reforms that have been proven to work to improve schools, such as class size reduction.  Our complete blueprint was featured on the Washington Post Answer Sheet, and is posted on our PAA website as a pdf here.

Please sign our petition in support of our proposals, and send a message to the President and the US Congress now!

Then  join us, as we fight for better schools!

Our children, our schools, our voices.

http://parentsacrossamerica.org/

Teachers jobs at Risk

Jonothan Raymond,

And there's the irony. This amazing teacher is one of 405 certificated employees in Sacramento City Unified School District that have been pink-slipped – one of thousands of hardworking, dedicated educators across the state. "I love what I'm doing," says Cooperman, "but it's so hard not to feel like you're not valued when you get a pink slip."

Without the extension of current temporary taxes, our district faces a $22.35 million deficit for 2011-12. To address this shortfall, our Board of Education approved painful cuts, including the elimination of most bus service, the elimination of all extracurricular activities like sports, drama and yearbook, and increased class sizes. With bigger class sizes, the district needs fewer teachers. Hence the pink slips.

Recently, The Bee published a commentary on tax extensions and education written by state Sen. Ted Gaines of Roseville, one of the Republicans opposed to giving voters a chance to weigh in on the future of K-12 education.

In his article, Gaines ignores the years of cuts public schools have endured as legislators chose time and again to balance the budget on the backs of children – $18 billion in cuts in the last three years. Our district has cut its budget by $177 million in the last nine years – a 35 percent reduction. Last year, SCUSD slashed its central office administration by $5.6 million to keep reductions away from classrooms.

Gaines also fails to address the possibility that the state will once again suspend Proposition 98, the constitutional guarantee passed by voters in 1988 that determines a minimum level of school funding. As Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, recently told The Bee, "There isn't a chance in the world that Proposition 98 will be sustained if $12 billion disappears from the budget."

Instead, Gaines poses a series of questions – no answers – about state spending, using hot-button examples. "What about prison costs?" he writes. "What about public employee pensions … ? What about the welfare system?"

With all due respect, Sen. Gaines, California will have higher prison costs, more inmates and more citizens dependent on state and federal services if we fail to adequately fund our schools.

RSA Animate - Crises of Capitalism- David Harvey

U.S. corporations avoid taxes - while you and I pay

Sanders explains the current crisis

The Daily Show - Exclusive - Bernie Sanders Extended Interview Pt. 1
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

May Day Action in Sacramento

MAY DAY ACTION! Immigrant Rights / International Workers Day Let’s Rally! Sunday, May 1st, 2011 @ 10 AM CA State Captiol – North Steps For more information, please contact Lino Pedres, Vice President of SEIU Local 1877, USWW at (916) 275-2039 or lino.pedres@seiu-usww.org.