A Green State of Mind

By Tom Siracuse:

More than 1.6 million students attend 5,000 charters in the U.S.. Only 10 states have no charters. Los Angeles and Detroit have around 70,000 students each in charters and Washington D.C.’s charters account for 58% of its public school students. The Louisiana State Legislature used the Katrina hurricane disaster to take over New Orleans’ public schools, de-unionized them and now 61% of the city’s students are in charters.

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By Tom Siracuse:

1. States and cities have budget deficits that must be solved by cutting expenditures, i.e. public sector worker wage freezes, layoffs, closing of schools, hospitals and firehouses, cuts in state and municipal workers’ wages, pensions and other benefits, raising tuition at city and state colleges and cuts in Medicaid to the poor.

True, state and municipal budgets are largely spent on public services but this is the function of local government. Other ways of solving these deficits are not to be considered, increase revenue by borrowing or raising taxes. Borrowing only delays the problem so what about raising taxes? The working class and the middle class already pay high taxes while their incomes have stagnated. But the ultra rich have greatly increased their incomes while they have reduced their taxes in the past 30 years. In 1980 the top 10% of income earners accounted for 33% of the nation’s total income. Now they account for almost 50%. The top 1% went from 10% to 20% of the nation’s income. 400 individuals possess more wealth than 50% of all Americans combined! Yet Wisconsin’s Gov. Walker gave tax credits to businesses and health savings accounts that cost the state $117 million, nearly the size of the state’s projected budget deficit. Gov. Cuomo refuses to extend the “millionaires” tax of 7.8% for incomes of $300,000-$500,000 and 8.9% for incomes over $500,000. These income brackets paid up to 15.4% in the 1970’s. Cuomo’s projected state budget deficit of 10 billion would be reduced by 4 billion by this moderate tax alone. The partial restoration of a stock transfer tax of only 1 penny per transfer and a 50% tax on bankers’ bonuses over $50,000 would eliminate the deficit and produce a surplus!

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Understanding the law requires understanding its creation through human will alongside its use as an organization of society, which in turn places it directly in the tension between order and freedom.

When looking at the law, as a human creation, one will find all laws come from the same source of human desire. Whether the law in question is autocratic or an expression of a collective free will, desire is the starting point. Desire precedes experience and can best be described as a human instinct that demands to play itself out across the social field. This is true of laws as well as political decisions, cultural ideas, or economic objects. All of these products of desire serve the purpose of satisfying that initial desire within society, and the law is no exception. Experience or use of these actualized effects will come later, and will determine what shape the social field will take and whether or not the original desire was satisfied. There is a nonlocality of form in desire, which means that before its actualization in the society forms exist as pure potential. This illustrates that reality in itself has two main and simultaneous components. The virtual is that of the pure potential of things, while the actual is the specific articulations of the virtual in particular times and places. Desire acts as the catalyst between the virtual and the actual, bringing certain forms into actual existence to serve that desire. These actual products are therefore structures that are made up of reality and in turn give shape to reality. That means that these structures are made up of various parts and relationships. All particular laws also follow this structural design in order to properly organize reality.

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