Welcome to the California Federation of Teachers

Hello to all of you special interest folks out there. My name is Dennis Smith and I am an accounting professor, a tax accountant, and the faculty chair of the Business Department at Sacramento City College. I am also a vice-president for the California Federation of Teachers and my special interest is students.

In his State of the State speech this year Governor Schwarzenegger laid out a series of so called “reforms” that included, privatizing public employee pensions, consolidating government power into the administrative branch, overturning the will of the people to provide a minimal level of funding for public education, and contracting out of public services.

Currently he is raising millions of dollars from corporations and wealthy individuals in Florida, Texas and other non-California sources to promote right wing initiatives aimed at centralizing government, diminishing democracy, destroying employee unions, restricting the political voice of working people, and rationing access to education.

The similarity of language and proposals occurring in California, at the national level, and in states across the nation is no coincidence.

Governor Schwarzenegger has told the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee that, “We want to feed the private sector, and we want to starve the public sector.” without raising taxes “because we don’t want to feed the monster.” Teachers are not monsters! Nurses are not monsters! Firefighters are not monsters! Public employees are not monsters!

In response to his statement, the Bee’s editorial page speculated that the Governor was channeling Grover Norquist a rabid anti-tax and anti-government uber conservative who is the unofficial domestic policy advisor to the current White House administration.

The writer George Orwell said, “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

In Federal law, we have, the “USA Patriot Act,” “The No Child Left Behind Act,” the “Clear Skies” environmental policy, and the “Healthy Forests Initiative.”

Now in California, we have a proposed initiative named the “Live Within Our Means Act” or the L.W.O.M. or the LWOM virus as I like to call it.

The LWOM is very much like an insidious computer virus. However, instead of deleting files, it deletes democracy by consolidating political power into the Governor’s office. The LWOM virus deletes access to public education by starving the schools of resources. The LWOM virus deletes the rights of many of California’s working people who use any public services, such as schools, roads, hospitals, protection, parks, and the list goes on.

In this morning’s Sacramento Bee, long-time political writer Peter Schrag poses the question, “The governor’s reform agenda: Is it class warfare? In the article, he comments on the LWOM. “It would be a heavy chain on the door to better schools, community colleges, health programs and other services that a modern society depends on. Worse, LWOM is based on some false premises. California is not a high tax state; general fund school spending which has risen more slowly in recent years than the budget as a whole, and which remains low, has not been driving the deficits.”

In January, in the Los Angeles Times an article written by Evan Halper with the title, “Tax Breaks Intensify State Fiscal Debate,” the lead sentence declared, “As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seeks to force down government expenses, his blueprint for long-term reform leaves one area untouched: tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.”

Not only do low taxes appeal to the haves, the have mores, and to the private sector, the consequent starvation of the public sector produces vast opportunity for corporate profits as public services are privatized.

Let me close by saying this. I have been a teacher, a small business owner, and scholar of business for more than twenty-five years. In the soulless world of mega corporations such as Halliburton, Enron, WorldCom, Merck, and others, the notion that competition will provide the lowest cost to the consumer and that the free market will turn unrestrained greed into socially acceptable outcomes is not the case nor is there any evidence that it ever it ever has been.

Those who would have us believe that the unfettered “invisible hand” of capitalism will produce an outcome that is sympathetic to the social good are wrong.

In his book, When Corporations Rule the World, the author, David Korten surmises, “In the end, the most important test of the legitimacy and performance of any economy is the extent to which it assures the right of every person to a means of a livelihood adequate to support full and healthy living.”

The free market ideology and mythology that is being “spun” to the American people by our immigrant Governor and his conservative cronies is in the best interest of business and corporate profits but it long ago ceased to be in the best interest of the people who live here.

To quote my esteemed friend, teacher colleague, and president of the California Federation of Teachers, Mary Bergan, “Our job is to push back.”

Now is not the time to turn inward. Now is the time for action to save public education, public services, retirement security, political voice, and perhaps the future of generations of middle class Californians. We teachers and others who care about California must do what we know how to do best, educate ourselves, educate our communities, and educate our political leaders! Thank you!

WHAT'S NEW at CFT