It is class war

By Robby Stern

Take a look at the chart on Page 4 comparing the cost of approved federal tax breaks for the wealthy to the cost of the programs that are presently being threatened in Congress. Similar comparisons can be made between loopholes in our state tax system and the cuts proposed in the proposed 2011 – 2013 state budget. The tax loopholes at both the state and federal level could be closed, given the political will.

We expect this callous disregard for the majority of the people from the Republicans. They are naked in their support of the wealthy and multinational corporations over the interests of the vast majority of the people in our state and country. But the Democrats control the White House and the Senate at the federal level and control the Governor’s mansion, the Senate and the House at the state level. While one can argue that the Democrats are “better” than the Republicans, too many of them (with a healthy core group who side with poor and working people) are “business Democrats” or “road kill Democrats”, which is what they call themselves in our state legislature. In many cases, they care too little about the impact of their actions on regular people.

We progressive people have a BIG challenge. It is going to take organizing and civic action the likes of which has not been seen in decades to gain the political power to turn this situation around.

We’ll continue to send PSARA members information about actions they can take as PSARA members. The actions may be as simple as communicating with your elected representatives or we may ask as many of you as can to join us in public actions designed to bring political pressure on the elected representatives or to give support to those who are standing up and fighting for a decent living standard and a fairer distribution of the wealth.

We will communicate with you through the Retiree Advocate, but since it comes out monthly and many of these fights require more immediate action, we will also use our website, www.psara.org; our email list serve; and we hope to have a PSARA Facebook page up and running in the next couple of months. Feel free to use the blog on the website and there will be opportunities to communicate on our Facebook page.

To reach those of you who use computers rarely or not at all, we will continue to use our telephone rapid response network. Our goal is to reach and involve every member!

Hang with us and do what you can. No guilt if you cannot respond to a particular request. We all have conflicting demands in our lives. There will be many other opportunities!!!