We need legalization for all starting now!

San José, CA – On Monday, January 28, a bipartisan group of eight Senators, four Democrats and four Republicans, announced a framework for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” or CIR. On Jan. 29, President Obama will be putting out his position, marking the beginning of an effort to “reform” U.S. immigration law this year.

San José, CA – Starting Jan. 1, payroll taxes paid by workers went up from 4.2% to 6.2%. This increase will affect about 77% of all households. Depending on other deductions and taxes, this will lower the take-home pay of workers by 2% or more.

San José, CA – On Jan. 23, Congressional Republicans caved in and voted for a three-month extension to the Federal Debt Limit. Up until Jan.23, the Republicans in the House of Representatives had refused to raise the debt limit, raising the specter that the U.S. government would have to choose between delaying Social Security payments, Medicare payments, payments to military, and/or interest on the national debt.

San José, CA – On Jan. 4, the U.S. Department of Labor released its report on the labor market for December 2012. The overall official unemployment rate stayed the same as in November, at 7.8%, and 155,000 new jobs were added. But the unemployment rate for adult women (20 years and older), increased from 7.0% in November to 7.3% in December, rising above the unemployment rate for adult men, which stayed the same at 7.2%.

Many tax cuts for wealthy also kept

San José, CA – Early New Year’s Day, the U.S. Senate voted 89-8 to pass a compromise bill to put off the so-called ‘fiscal cliff.’ The bill now goes to the House of Representatives, where Republicans are likely to try to get even more tax breaks for the rich.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been attacking the Obama administration for “cutting” Medicare, and Romney has promised to restore these cuts. While Romney is saying that he will protect Medicare, in fact he is protecting health insurance companies, while out-of-pocket costs for seniors will go up.

San José, CA – On July 6, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that only 80,000 net new jobs were created in June. This was less than most mainstream economists predicted and far less than what is needed to put the millions of unemployed back to work. So it was no surprise that the official unemployment rate stayed the same from May to June, at 8.2%.

San José, CA – On June 25 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against most of the parts of Arizona’s SB1070, which had ignited nationwide protests against the anti-immigrant law. But at the same time the court upheld part of the law that would allow for expanding federal and local joint efforts to deport more undocumented people.

Agreement won’t help Spain’s economic depression

San José, CA – On June 9, Spain and the European Union made an agreement to bail out Spain’s troubled banking sector. This agreement means Spain is the fourth country (along with Portugal, Ireland and Greece) in the eurozone to have to take a bailout.

San José, CA – On June 1, the Department of Labor released its monthly report on unemployment and employment for May, 2012. The report said that only 69,000 jobs were added in the U.S. economy in May, less than half of what professional economists had been predicting. Even worse, the report revised earlier estimates of job growth in March and April down by another 49,000 jobs.

San José, CA – In the first five months of this year, more than 400,000 jobless workers have been cut from collecting unemployment insurance benefits under the Federal Extended Benefits (EB) program. Another 100,000 will also lose their benefits when the EB program ends at the end of May, bringing the total to more than a half million unemployed who will be losing their benefits.

San José, CA – A new report by the Associated Press confirms what many people already knew: the job market for young college graduates just plain sucks. Pardon my language, but to have more than half (53.6%) of people under 25 with a bachelor’s degree either out of work or doing jobs that only need a high school diploma or even less education is outrageous.

San José, CA – On Feb. 19, more than 425 people attended the 32nd Annual Day of Remembrance event in San José Japantown organized by the Nihonmachi (Japantown) Outreach Committee (NOC). This event commemorated the 70th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt that led to the incarceration of almost 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.

San José, CA – On Feb. 19, almost 50 people packed the San Jose Peace and Justice Center to hear Carlos Montes speak. The event was sponsored by the South Bay Committee Against Political Repression and co-sponsored by the Peace and Justice Center and by MAÍZ (Movimiento de Accion, Inspirando Servicio – Movement of Action, Inspiring Service).

San José, CA – On Feb. 29, federal Extended Unemployment Insurance benefits will end unless Congress agrees to continue the program. Republicans in Congress are threatening to block the extension unless they are able to cut benefits and make federal workers pay for the cost of the program.

San José, CA – On Dec. 22, the leadership of the Republicans in the House of Representatives said that they would sign on to a bipartisan compromise to renew federal Unemployment Insurance benefits. This compromise had passed the Senate by an 89-10 vote earlier in the week. The House Republican action came after intense pressure from the unemployed, Democratic politicians and even Republican Senators after the House of Representatives had voted down the compromise bill on a 229-193 vote on Dec. 20.

San José, CA – On Dec. 9, Republican Congressman Dave Camp of Michigan introduced a bill, H.R. 3630, that would cut federal extended unemployment insurance benefits from a maximum of 73 weeks to only 33 weeks. In addition, the bill allows for a number of new hoops for jobless workers to jump through in order to get unemployment insurance benefits, including mandatory drug testing.

San José, CA – On Friday, Dec. 2, the U.S. Department of Labor said that the official unemployment rate fell to 8.6% in November, from 9.0% in October. Despite being the lowest unemployment rate since March of 2009, the fall in the unemployment rate was mainly due to the more than 400,000 jobless workers who gave up looking for work and were no longer counted as unemployed.

_Second of four-part series _

Editor’s note: This is the second article of a four-article series. The first article was titled, “ Who are the one percent?” This article describes the working class, who make up most of the 99%. The next article will be about the rest of the 99% who aren’t part of the working class. The last article will talk about how the history of racism and national oppression is important to understanding what is behind the 1%-99% divide and how the 1% enriches itself while maintaining its privilege and power.

First of four articles

Across the country, the movement sparked by Occupy Wall Street has caught fire. This movement, identified by the slogan, “We are the 99%” targets the 1% of rich and powerful who are running the country for their interests and profit, at the expense of the rest of us who face high unemployment, lower wages, soaring tuition costs, home foreclosures and lack of affordable health insurance. In addition, servants of Wall Street are pushing to dismantle Social Security and Medicare and to raise taxes on the poor while cutting taxes even more on the rich. They say that they have no money, but are sending bombers and troops to more and more countries, so that military spending is now the single largest expense of the federal government, costing more than $800 billion a year.