the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 14, 2008
Legislative leaders worked with Governor O’Malley during the final days of the session that ended on April 7 to confiscate half of 400 million dollars in seed money set aside to finance retiree health benefits in the future. These top state officials claim they needed this money to balance the state budget for the coming year.
Of course, state officials had plenty of money for other things. For example, they decided not to tax computer services, used primarily by businesses. State officials had already projected that this tax would bring in 200 million dollars in the coming year. They raided the retirees’ health care fund for the same amount of money.
It couldn’t be clearer. The next step will be for Maryland’s top politicians and state officials to claim the state doesn’t have money to pay for the health care benefits of both active and retired state workers.
State workers better watch out. These top politicians–all of whom are Democrats–may claim to be the workers’ friends. But they’ll use every trick in the book to take every penny they can from the workers and hand it over to big business.