Views in brief

Planning a strike in Princeton

I AND my coworkers, mainly wait staff, at a restaurant in Princeton, N.J., are planning a strike for November 19.

Our employer is stealing our tips, under the guise of "sharing" them with support staff in the restaurant. The support staff, however, makes a pittance while our tip outs are enormous.

Clearly, they are pocketing our tips. Additionally, they have recently increased the percentage of our tips they are taking, up to 4.5 percent of our total sales. This means that if we are tipped 15 percent, we can only keep 10.5 percent before taxes.

Ownership is growing more and more arrogant and brazen in their mistreatment of their workers. Things get worse by the day, with new "privileges" taken from us at a constant rate. They even go as far as to make us work parties and events for only our $2 an hour, and have us come in three to four hours before we get a table in order to clean and set up the restaurant because they only have to pay us $2 an hour.

I am looking for any advice, assistance, or publicity we can get to put the pressure on management/ownership to cave to our demands.
Anonymous, Princeton, N.J.

Education funding should be equal

IN RESPONSE to "Answer No. 1: Stop scapegoating teachers": This is an excellent piece. Schools should all get equal funding per student. How can it be constitutional that property taxes determine the level of education that students get?

Education is a human right. Privatization will cost millions of young people a decent education, simply because they were born in the wrong town to the wrong parents. Socialism is the answer, starting with a transaction tax on Wall Street trading to fund public schools.
Brighton, Atlanta

Holding the media accountable

IN RESPONSE to "Standing up against Fox's hate": This is a timely and wonderful protest, which is absolutely necessary and advisable. The corporate media are the purveyors of hate, and need to be held accountable for the lies and pro-war racism they spew out everyday.
Rupen Savoulian, from the Internet

Some disagreements over DADT

I AM not a regular reader of SocialistWorker.org, and I try not to get involved with all the political bull crap going on in Washington. However, I was reading the article called "How Obama got from hope to hopeless", and I noticed some things that I disagree with.

First up, I am in the military, but I support LGBT rights, and I oppose "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT). I was thrilled when the federal judge took down DADT. However, there is a reason the Obama administration went to court to overturn that. This is the military, and one cannot simply decide out of the blue to change a long-held ruling.

There will be consequences to this decision, and if Obama is to let gays serve in the military, it must be under his terms, not those of a California judge. He is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, higher up than the highest generals. It must be strictly under his terms if this decision is to have any effect. Which is why he temporarily reenacted DADT.

Second, the stimulus package may have been extremely unfair for the workers and taxpayers, but it was necessary for our economy. If the banks went under, our whole economic system would have plunged into another depression. Personally, I feel we are lucky to have avoided one.

The market system, or capitalism as you guys call it, is not designed to be fair or just. It is designed to be efficient. That efficiency is what allowed our country to beat the Soviet Union and its command economy, which was tightly regulated by the government. In the end, we still need those banks. I agree that those responsible should be punished, but the stimulus package was necessary for the good of the economy.

Those are just my views. I don't consider myself on the left or the right, but in the middle.
Peter, from the Internet