It’s not about us and them, it’s about sharing — just ask Mark Zuckerberg

By Hoover Wind, Kathleen Kenna and Hadi Dadashian

It’s not about us and them.

As much as we honor the peaceful intentions of the Occupy movement, it’s not just a simple formula of 1% versus 99%.

It’s about all Americans, as Sarah Palin reminded us at the CPAC convention this weekend.

Let’s look at Mark Zuckerberg, sometimes reviled, sometimes beloved founder of Facebook.

It sounds outrageous that the social networking giant could raise $5 billion in its public stock offering.

We want all American companies to raise that kind of cash in their IPOs.

We want all American companies, all Americans — from the wealthiest to the lowest-income  — to share.

Zuckerberg, hopefully, is about to show us how this is possible.

Say Facebook raises $5 billion.

This means as much as $1 billion for the rest of California.

How? That five-letter word in the current election campaign: T-A-X-E-S.

The non-partisan legislative analyst’s office in California estimates this single IPO — the largest ever for an Internet-based firm — could bring California millions, and perhaps even $1 billion, in taxes.

This has so excited California’s governor, the sometimes reviled, sometimes beloved Jerry Brown, that his staff has offered to mow Zuckerberg’s lawn in exchange.

“If it is as big as it is being billed, then on behalf of a grateful state, I will go to Mark Zuckerberg’s house and either wash his windows or mow his lawn,” says H.D. Palmer, Brown’s finance spokesman.

This is the great part:  The non-partisan legislative analyst’s office and the Democrat governor’s office have both put one of California’s richest entrepreneurs on notice.

Pundits are crowing that Zuckerberg will pay the most taxes of any American in history.  This is good news, no matter where you stand on tax reform, tax breaks for the rich, or tax hikes.

California is broke.  With a deficit of more than $9 billion, its schools are falling apart, and its streets and highways are filling with garbage.  Social services — for veterans, elders, people with disabilities, children and low-income families — have been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

Slashbacks across all levels of government have hit all public services, from policing to economic development, like a tsunami.

To international visitors, it appears that California’s homeless population is growing, in major cities and small towns.

Politicians will fall all over themselves with a windfall like this. Watch for national politicians to argue about how Zuckerberg’s tax contributions should be spent — more prisons/less prisons; more affordable housing/more campaign contributions.

We’ll be watching Zuckerberg and his Facebook workers, many of whom are counting on becoming millionaires as a result of this IPO.

Will they park their new profits outside the country to avoid taxes?

Or will they share, by paying full taxes — however that is defined — to help California’s most vulnerable?

Will they, as Republican minority leaders in California insist, use this newfound tax wealth to “protect our public school students … and pay down the state’s debt service.”

You know — the debt that everyone shared in accumulating during the so-called “good years”?

Call Congress. Call President Obama. Urge them to extend unemployment benefits

By Kathleen Kenna, Hadi Dadashian and Hoover Wind

We’re ashamed and appalled that members of Congress are going home to holiday feasts and celebrations and denying the rights of people without jobs.

We’re ashamed that unemployment benefits are again being used as a pawn in Washington’s chess game. Hurting the vulnerable is always the path Congress takes when it refuses to do the work that we, the people, expect.

It’s estimated 1.8 million workers will lose their unemployment benefits within weeks, and another 6 million — equal to the entire population of Missouri — face losing this safety net next year.

Yet unemployment benefits are so critical in this lame economy that 18 million Americans have relied on them since the 2008 recession.

As workers who have subsidized these benefits in good faith, we demand that Congress use our contributions for the purpose they were intended:  Helping people who are unemployed survive while seeking work.

American employers pay into the system believing it will be a safety net if they suffer layoffs, shutdowns, terminations or downsizing.  Workers indirectly pay for this protection too.

(Check the House of Representatives website for FAQ about how unemployment insurance is funded in the U.S.)

The economy is so rough on so many — with and without jobs — that the jobless are demonized for using unemployment benefits to support their families when they’re forced out of work.

We hear about new job losses every day, from police on the east coast to 30-year IBM workers on the west coast.  The national unemployment rate, officially at 8.6%, is far higher than Congress admits, because so few jobless people are actually collecting or seeking unemployment benefits.

There are an estimated 25 million people out of work in this, the richest nation on earth.  That’s equal to the population of Texas.

Worse, unemployment is lasting longer:  New stats show the average duration of U.S. unemployment is 41 weeks.  Most who lose their jobs involuntarily are out of work for months. The U.S. Bureau of Labor reports that 59% of jobless people in America are unemployed for 15 weeks or more.

Despite signs of improvement — house construction is up almost 10% — economic growth still lags, and jobs are not being created at a pace that helps most unemployed Americans.

The Salvation Army, food banks, faith groups and other selfless Americans across this country report that demand for the basics of life — food, warm clothes — has soared since the recession hit.  Need has not diminished in this so-called jobless recovery.

And shelter, in the worst foreclosure crisis in this nation’s history, remains a worry for millions.

To reduce unemployment benefits at a time of high unemployment is unconscionable.

It’s immoral.

People of all faiths are pressuring Congress to do the right thing.

Interfaith Worker Justice has held public prayer vigils in Washington, seeking help for the jobless. Echoing Occupy Wall St., they’re asking the 1% to share more of America’s wealth with the 99%.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to Congress this week urging politicians to extend unemployment insurance.

“When the economy fails to generate sufficient jobs, there is a moral obligation to help protect the life and dignity of unemployed workers and their families,” wrote Bishop Stephen Blaire. “Therefore, I strongly urge you and your colleagues to find effective ways to assure continuing Unemployment Insurance and Emergency Unemployment Compensation to protect jobless workers and their families.”

Rev. Blaire’s letter to Congress cites Pope John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical: “The obligation to provide unemployment benefits … the duty to make suitable grants indispensable for the subsistence of unemployed workers and their families, is a duty springing from the fundamental principle of … the right to life and subsistence.”

The National Employment Law Project is among a growing chorus demanding Congress extend unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts to help workers.

Starting today, Hire Your Neighbor is calling every member of our congressional delegations to urge them to stand up for people who are unemployed.

Then we’ll contact every Senator and every member of the House of Representatives, regardless of party, to demand that unemployment insurance benefits be extended.

We’re contacting each to urge that payroll tax cuts — helping so many underemployed and underpaid Americans pay their bills — be extended.

With no strings attached.

We are emailing President Barack Obama to ask, politely, that he lead on both these issues, and lead the country in finding ways to create good jobs again.

Hire Your Neighbor is urging Americans to join us in this national conversation about unemployment.

Call Congress and tell politicians to get back to the work of the people.

Don’t know the number of your senators and members of the House?  Call toll-free, 888-245-3381, and people fighting for the rights of unemployed workers will connect you with the right office.

Contact the White House — use this form — and urge President Barack Obama to stand up for the rights of people without jobs.

Related stories:  “Unemployment Insurance Under the Knife” (The Nation)

“Catholic Bishops, Other Religious Groups Lobby for Unemployment Insurance Extensions” (Huffington Post)