'Our childrens' futures will be

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all liquid assets (checking accounts, money market accounts, and the like), 39 percent of corporate and government bonds, and 71 percent of tax-exempt municipal bonds. Yet workers pay 75 percent of the taxes.

And what are we getting for chipping in 75 percent? Cutbacks and layoffs. The tax system has created a system of "welfare for the rich."

The clearest example of this is the savings and loan bailout. Over $300 billion has been voted by Congress to reimburse the greedy S&L owners, who stole the money in the first place. Now the banks are in trouble, so Congress has just appropriated $70 billion to bail them out. And Congress recently voted to spend $56 billion to pay for the Persian Gulf war, which was fought for the benefit of the oil conglomerates.

What kind of priorities are these? Fifty-six billion dollars to murder the Iraqi people. Seventy billion dollars to bail out the banks. Three hundred billion dollars to bail out the S&Ls. And not one dollar to bail out the schools! No money for housing. No money for health care. No money for AIDS research. No money to feed the one in eight American children who are starving.

I saw an item in Herb Caen's column [in the San Francisco Chronicle] today which I thought was appropriate. He says American cities are plagued by SCUDS, too. Sickness, crime, unemployment, drugs, and school underfunding. But where are the million-dollar Patriots to the rescue?

Union leadership defaults

So what are we to do? How can we save our schools? What is the leadership of the California teachers' unions proposing?

Unfortunately, the California Teachers Association (CTA), which represents 230,000 teachers in the state, has defaulted in its task of leading the fight-back. Instead of offering clear direction, its approach to the crisis is to rely on Democratic Party state politicians.

Because a two-thirds majority in the state legislature is necessary to block Wilson's suspension of Proposition 98 (which guaranteed that 40 percent of the state budget be allocated for education)-thus allowing him to cut the $2 billion from the school budget—the CTA is counting on its "friends" in the Democratic Party to vote against the suspension.

Local union leaders are telling parents to write letters to their stat: legislatures and are circulating petitions to send to the statehouse.

The union leadership has bought the arguments of the politicians that there's just not enough money in the budget and that cuts must come from somewhere. They are calling for increased taxes and asking that other state programs, not education, be cut.

This is not a winning strategy. Outside of the fact that the Democratic Party cannot be counted on to safeguard any of our rights, it will be a hollow victory if Prop. 98 remains in place but every worker is paying a higher sales tax to finance less quality education.

It's not true that there's not enough money in the budget, and it's certainly not true that there's not enough money to fund the social services people need. The priorities of spending the money are screwed up. In 1988, the federal government paid (continued on next page)