I want to do one more blog on specific politicians so you can see what makes a neo-liberal. We must educate all around us, so please start your own blog.....share this one with others....but most importantly.....CREATE DEMOCRACY NOW COMMUNITY GROUPS AND IDENTIFY GOOD PEOPLE FOR WHOM TO RUN AND VOTE IN ALL ELECTIONS!
SHAKE THE CORPORATE BUGS OUT OF THE RUG!
Barbara was a new-comer to Congress when the vote to end Glass Steagall in order to create global corporations and for corporate rule to take place, but she has been a devoted wealth and profit foot soldier ever since. She and Cardin sent a trillion in taxpayer money to Johns Hopkins to build the corporation we have today. SHE HAS A SUPER NOVA NAMED FOR HER BECAUSE OF HER CREATION OF THE GLOBAL CORPORATION....JOHNS HOPKINS. Neo-liberals who work for global markets and global corporate interests must be war/security hawks in order to protect global corporate interests. WE JUST HAD WALL STREET STEAL TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORLD-WIDE FOR EXAMPLE AND THAT MAKES LOTS OF PEOPLE OUTRAGED AGAINST US BUSINESS INTERESTS! This is why Maryland neo-liberals will vote for war...they are corporate pols and not democrats!
Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski says she supports Syria strike5
Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., said on Monday that she would support U.S. airstrikes against Syria. (Getty Images / September 9, 2013)
By John Fritze The Baltimore Sun 7:28 p.m. EDT, September 9, 2013
The dean of Maryland's congressional delegation and a prominent voice in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, said on Monday that she supports giving President Barack Obama authorization to strike Syria.
"I believe the president's plan is the best response to protecting U.S. security interests in the region," Mikulski, the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said during a lengthy speech on the Senate floor.
"Therefore…after really great reflection and as much due diligence as I could do, I want to announce today to my colleagues and most of all to the people of Maryland who have supported me, that I will support the president's request for a targeted, limited military action against the Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime in response to the horrific, grim and ghoulish use of chemical weapons," she said.
The decision is potentially significant for members of Maryland's congressional delegation -- most of whom remain undecided on airstrikes in Syria -- as well as Democrats elsewhere who have been wary of the proposal. But it also came hours before Senate Democratic leaders said they would delay a vote on the measure set for Wednesday after several other lawmakers announced their opposition.
Mikulski, the longest serving woman in Congress, was one of 19 senators who voted against the Iraqi war resolution in 2002.
The announcement came as support for military action in Congress appeared increasingly questionable. It also came as Obama said he was open to an idea floated by Russia on Monday that Syria place its chemical weapons under international control and eventually destroy them in order to avoid a U.S. strike.
Maryland's other senator, Democrat Ben Cardin, has already cast a vote in favor of the resolution in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Senate had been expected to bring the measure to the floor for a key procedural vote on Wednesday, a day after Obama is set to address the nation. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said late Monday that vote would be postponned.
Mikulski said she has heard from thousands of constituents and acknowledged that the vast majority opposed military intervention. She emerged from a classified briefing last week saying she was confident Assad had used the weapons but undecided about whether a military strike was the best response.
"They don't want war," Mikulski said of her constituents. "And neither do I."
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Regarding Mary Pat Clarke's endorsement of Mizeur for governor:
I think these two are a match because they are the good cops of the neo-liberal policy-machine. While they work to install all corporate policy and protect wealth and profit....THEY FEEL OUR PAIN....Mizeur is of course a Montgomery County pol getting to where she is by voting for neo-liberal policy and Mary Pat Clarke is a devoted Johns Hopkins pol working for corporate rule. The first sign of a campaign platform from Mizeur is her devotion to public parivate partnerships and Wall Street complex financial instruments to 'MOVE MARYLAND FORWARD' ----THE DAVOS SWITZERLAND MOTTO ALL NEO-LIBERALS EMBRACE.
Indeed, the two policies killing the American people and the future of democracy......Indebting the public to Wall Street credit while allowing Wall Street to steal trillions of dollars in the process....and handing all that is public to corporate hands under the guise that government does not have the money to operate by itself. MIZEUR AND CLARKE ARE AVID SUPPORTERS OF THIS MOVEMENT OF WEALTH TO THE TOP! So why would a democratic voter vote for either of these two neo-liberals? So far, because no democratic candidates are running and that is what is crony in Maryland's political machine. AS I HEAR ALL MARYLAND VOTERS SAY.....WE HAVE NO CANDIDATES FOR WHICH WE WANT TO VOTE AND INDEED, AS IN BALTIMORE THE TURNOUT FOR ELECTIONS IS LESS THAN 20%.
This is not free and fair elections and this condition exists because of crony political machines and captured media like WYPR....the neo-liberal corporate 'public' media!
Remember, Gansler, Anthony Brown/Ulman are raging Wall Street pols as well! WHERE IS THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE?
We are about to see a national public infrastructure funding bill that will send hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure building and we already see neo-liberals making sure that private contractors will get all of that money. Now, we know in Maryland private contractors are doing nothing but creating an environment of fraud and corruption and keeping Maryland and Baltimore labor from having strong job security and wages. We will see all of these funds go to pay to play schemes as global corporations from foreign countries are allowed to do national building so that US corporations get work in those countries....same for Maryland businesses getting work all across the country by giving work in Maryland to other states. ALL OF THIS WORKS AGAINST CITIZENS IN EACH STATE AND AGAINST JOB SECURITY AND WAGE/BENEFITS AND IT IS DONE DELIBERATELY.
Stop allowing neo-liberals to pretend the only way to have work it to give corporations everything they want!
O'Malley to sign public-private partnership bill tomorrow
April 08, 2013|By Erin Cox | The Baltimore Sun
Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown said a bill that would allow private companies to help build public works projects will get the governor's signature tomorrow.
Lawmakers approved the bill laying out rules for public-private partnerships on Monday afternoon, the last day of General Assembly session.
In an interview, Brown said the legislation two years in the making could allow a private company to finance the propose Purple Line, the Red Line or create a second crossing of the Nice Bridge connecting Charles County to Virginia.
"We're going to get back to the business of investing in Maryland," Brown said.
The proposal to allow private companies to bid on public projects failed last year. Brown, who led the administration's efforts to pass the bill, said the passed version gives more incentives for businesses to participate.
Between 6 and 10 percent of the capital budget, roughly $315 million a year, could be paid for private dollars when the program is in place.
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This corporate attack on the American people requires that a very small group of the richest capture the support of the poor in their quest to rewrite US history and Constitution. All third world dictators always make sure the poor are given enough to survive in order to garner support. That is what is happening in this corporate takeover of America. The people most hurt by an attack on Democracy and the US Constitution will be people of color and indeed this massive corporate fraud of the past decade was aimed largely at the poor and working class. Yet, corporate pols are now putting on the face of the very people hurt to advance these terrible, autocratic policies.
When Al Sharpton is asked why he joined a Wall Street health spa attended by the fraudsters that fleeced people of color he said....I FOUGHT TO BE ABLE TO DO THIS. As a local black lawyer told me as well when I asked why there was no public justice in Maryland...where are the justice lawyers? ...he said as well.....IT'S ABOUT THE MONEY!
We need people who are now being co-opted to advance policy that will secure totalitarian capture of US democracy to think: DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU AND THE WEALTH THEY HAVE GIVEN YOU WILL STAY IN YOUR OR YOUR FAMILY'S HANDS FOR LONG?
OF COURSE NOT....an injustice for one becomes an injustice for all!
Cornel West and the Fight to Save the Black Prophetic Tradition
Monday, 09 September 2013 09:17 By Chris Hedges, TruthDig | Report
.There is an insidious and largely unseen effort by the White House to silence the handful of voices that remain true to the black prophetic tradition. This tradition, which stretches back to Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, has consistently named and damned the cruelty of imperialism and white supremacy. It has done so with a clarity and moral force that have eluded most other critics of American capitalism. President Barack Obama first displayed his fear of this tradition when he betrayed his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, abetting the brutal character assassination of one of the church’s most prophetic voices. And he has sustained this assault, largely through black surrogates such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, Tom Joyner and Steve Harvey, in vicious attacks on Cornel West.
“Jeremiah Wright was the canary in the mine,” West said when we met a few days ago in Princeton, N.J. “The black prophetic tradition has been emptied out. Its leaders have either been murdered or incarcerated. ... A lot of political prisoners who represent the black prophetic tradition [are] in jail. They have been in there for decades. Or we have leaders who have completely sold out. They have been co-opted. And these are the three major developments. With sold-out leaders you get a pacified followership or people who are scared.”
“The black prophetic tradition has been the leaven in the American democratic loaf,” West said. “What has kept American democracy from going fascist or authoritarian or autocratic has been the legacy of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Martin King, Fannie Lou Hamer. This is not because black people have a monopoly on truth, goodness or beauty. It is because the black freedom movement puts pressure on the American empire in the name of integrity, decency, honesty and virtue.”
The tradition is sustained by a handful of beleaguered writers and intellectuals, including Glen Ford and his Black Agenda Report, James Cone, Carl Dix, Bruce Dixon, Boyce Watkins, Yvette Carnell, Robin Kelley, Margaret Kimberley, Nellie Bailey, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, Maulana Karenga, Ajamu Baraka and Wright, but none have the public profile of West, who is routinely attacked by Obama’s black supporters as a “race traitor,” the equivalent of a “self-hating Jew” to hard-line supporters of Israel. It is understandable why this tradition frightens Obama. It exposes him as the ideological heir of Booker T. Washington, a black accommodationist whose core message to black people was, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, “adjustment and submission.” The wide swath of destruction Obama has overseen on behalf of the corporate state includes the eradication of most of our civil liberties and our privacy, the expansion of imperial war, the use of kill lists, abject subservience to Wall Street’s criminal class and the military-industrial complex, the relentless persecution of whistle-blowers, mass incarceration of poor people of color and the failure to ameliorate the increasing distress of the poor and the working class. His message to the black underclass in the midst of the corporate rape of the nation is drawn verbatim from the Booker T. Washington playbook. He tells them to work harder—as if anyone works harder than the working poor in this country—and obey the law.
“Obama is the highest manifestation of the co-optation that took place,” West said. “It shifted to the black political class. The black political class, more and more, found itself unable to tell the truth, or if they began to tell some of the truth they were [put] under surveillance, attacked and demonized. Forty percent of our babies are living in poverty, living without enough food, and Obama comes to us and says quit whining. He doesn’t say that to the Business Roundtable. He doesn’t say that to the corporate elites. He doesn’t say that to AIPAC, the conservative Jewish brothers and sisters who will do anything to support the Israeli occupation against Palestinians. This kind of neglect in policy is coupled with disrespect in his speeches to black folk, which the mainstream calls tough love.”
“He is a shell of a man,” West said of Obama. “There is no deep conviction. There is no connection to something bigger than him. It is a sad spectacle, sad if he were not the head of an empire that is in such decline and so dangerous. This is a nadir. William Trotter and Du Bois, along with Ida B. Wells-Barnett, were going at Book T tooth and nail. Look at the fights between [Marcus] Garvey and Du Bois, or Garvey and A. Philip Randolph. But now if you criticize Obama the way Randolph criticized Garvey, you become a race traitor and an Uncle Tom. A lot of that comes out of the Obama machine, the Obama plantation.”
“The most pernicious development is the incorporation of the black prophetic tradition into the Obama imperial project,” West said. “Obama used [Martin Luther] King’s Bible during his inauguration, but under the National Defense Authorization Act King would be detained without due process. He would be under surveillance every day because of his association with Nelson Mandela, who was the head of a ‘terrorist’ organization, the African National Congress. We see the richest prophetic tradition in America desecrated in the name of a neoliberal worldview, a worldview King would be in direct opposition to. Martin would be against Obama because of his neglect of the poor and the working class and because of the [aerial] drones, because he is a war president, because he draws up kill lists. And Martin King would have nothing to do with that.”
“We are talking about crimes against humanity—Wall Street crimes, war crimes, the crimes of the criminal justice system in the form of Jim Crow, the crimes against our working poor that have their backs pushed against the wall because of stagnant wages and corporate profits going up,” West said. “Abraham Heschel said that the distinctive feature of any empire in decline is its indifference to criminality. That is a fundamental feature of our time, an indifference to criminality, especially on top, wickedness in high places.”
“This is not personal,” West said. “This was true for [George W.] Bush. It was true for [Bill] Clinton. We are talking about an imperial system, manifest in Obama’s robust effort to bomb Syria. War crimes against Syrian children do not justify U.S. war crimes. We are talking about a corporate state and a massive surveillance and national security state. It operates according to its own logic. Profit on the one hand, and secrecy to hide imperial policy on the other. Jesse [Jackson] was the head house Negro on the Clinton plantation, just as Sharpton is the head house Negro on the Obama plantation. But there is a difference. Jesse was willing to oppose Clinton on a variety of issues. He marched, for example, against the welfare bill. But Sharpton loves the plantation. He will not say a critical word. It is sad and pathetic. We are living in the age of the sellout.”
“Garvey used to say that as long as black people were in America the masses of black people, the poor and the working class, would never be treated with respect, decency or fairness,” West said. “That has always been a skeleton in the closet, the fundamental challenge to the black prophetic tradition. It may very well be that black people will never be free in America. But I believe, and the black prophetic tradition believes, that we proceed because black people are worthy of being free, just as poor people of all colors are worthy of being free, even if they never will be free. That is the existential leap of faith. There is no doubt that with a black president the black masses are still treated unfairly, from stop and frisk to high unemployment, indecent housing and decrepit education.”
“It is a spiritual issue,” West said. “What kind of person do you choose to be? People say, ‘Well, Brother West, since the mass of black folk will never be free then let me just get mine.’ That is the dominant response. ‘I am wasting my time fighting a battle that can’t be won.’ But that is not what the black prophetic tradition is about. History is a mystery. Yes, it doesn’t look good. But the masses of black folk must be respected. Malcolm X used to say as long as they are not respected you could show me all the individual respect you want but I know it’s empty. That is the fundamental divide between the prophetic tradition and the sellouts.”
The tradition has been diminished by what West called the “emaciation” of the black press that once amplified the voices of black radicals. The decline of the black press and the consolidation of the media, especially the electronic media, into the hands of a few corporations means that those who remain faithful to this tradition have been shut out. West does not appear on MSNBC, where the black and white hosts serve as giddy cheerleaders for Obama, and was abruptly dropped as a scheduled guest on an edition of CBS’ “Face the Nation” that aired after the 50 anniversary of the march on Washington. The black prophetic tradition is rarely taught in schools, including primarily African-American schools, and West said that this deterioration threatens to extinguish the tradition.
“It no longer has a legitimacy or significant foothold in the minds of the black masses,” West said. “With corporate media and the narrowing of the imagination of all Americans, including black people, there is an erasure of memory. This is the near death of the black prophetic tradition. It is a grave issue. It is a matter of life and death. It means that the major roadblock to American fascism, which has been the black prophetic tradition, is gone. To imagine America without the black prophetic tradition, from Frederick Douglass to Fannie Lou Hamer, means an American authoritarian regime, American fascism. We already have the infrastructure in place for the police state.”
“Black intelligence and black suspicion is still there among the masses,” West said. “Black people are not stupid. We are not completely duped. We are just scared. We don’t think there is any alternative. This is re-niggerization of the black professional class. They have big money, nice positions, comfort and convenience, but are scared, intimidated, afraid to tell the truth and will not bear witness to justice. Those who are incorporated into the black professional and political class are willing to tolerate disrespect for the black masses and sip their tea and accept their checks and gain access to power. That is what niggerization is—keeping people afraid and intimidated.”
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Below you see Obama's former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, now Chicago's mayor coming out fighting for Wall Street! Rahm is a former investment banker and his appointment by Obama let all know Obama was Wall Street, not Main Street.
Here in Maryland O'Malley has stacked the Department of Education with education privatizers just as has Obama. All of Maryland Assembly democrats and Baltimore City Hall democrats support these policies because they are neo-liberals working for wealth and profit.
These pols are starting in Baltimore and now Prince George's County because these are heavily black areas with citizens having no leaders protecting them. Baltimore is raging in K-12 privatizing and Maryland is tops in university privatizing.
STOP RE-ELECTING NEO-LIBERAL INCUMBENTS! IF YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATION IS NOT RUNNING CANDIDATES AGAINST THESE NEO-LIBERALS IN PRIMARIES....THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!
Below we see why all of Chicago's labor and justice fought Emanuel's education and school closing policies...it wasn't about saving money....it was about privatizing with charters and Teach for America!
Diane Ravitch's blog A site to discuss better education for all « Jack Schneider: What Do Students Remember about Their Favorite Teacher? Wendy Lecker: Our Orwellian Education Policy, part 2 »
Chicago Bombshell! TFA Plans to Staff 52 New Charters as 50 Public Schools Die
By dianerav September 9, 2013 // 36 Edushyster obtained internal planning documents from Teach for America in Chicago.
The document displayed on her website shows plans for 52 new privately-managed charters that will open over the next five years.
These charters will be staffed largely by TFA’s young recruits, with five weeks of training.
Just weeks ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 public schools, claiming they were “underutilized.” But the school closures presented an opportunity to expand the charter sector.
EduShyster notes that the plan is symbolic of TFA’s new role:
“TFA has largely abandoned its earlier mission of staffing hard-to-fill positions in public schools, serving instead as a placement agency for urban charters. In Chicago, however, TFA’s role appears to go far beyond providing labor for the fast-growing charter sector. An internal TFA document indicates that the organization has a plan to dramatically expand the number of charter schools in the city.”
TFA has become the handmaiden of the privatization movement. Without TFA’s ready supply of eager and inexperienced young college graduates, willing to work long hours without a union and with meager wages, it would be impossible to expand these private-sector schools at such a rapid clip.
Since the projected hiring of many more TFA corps members coincides with the layoff of large numbers of Chicago public school teachers, it is safe to say that TFA is helping not only to privatize the Chicago public schools but to bust the union.
This may fit right in with the far-right ideals of the Walton Family Foundation, which gifted TFA with $50 million, but it somehow does not sound all that idealistic.
Imagine the new TFA recruiting poster: Join TFA and Privatize America’s Public Schools! Bust the Teachers’ Unions!
SHAKE THE CORPORATE BUGS OUT OF THE RUG!
Barbara was a new-comer to Congress when the vote to end Glass Steagall in order to create global corporations and for corporate rule to take place, but she has been a devoted wealth and profit foot soldier ever since. She and Cardin sent a trillion in taxpayer money to Johns Hopkins to build the corporation we have today. SHE HAS A SUPER NOVA NAMED FOR HER BECAUSE OF HER CREATION OF THE GLOBAL CORPORATION....JOHNS HOPKINS. Neo-liberals who work for global markets and global corporate interests must be war/security hawks in order to protect global corporate interests. WE JUST HAD WALL STREET STEAL TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORLD-WIDE FOR EXAMPLE AND THAT MAKES LOTS OF PEOPLE OUTRAGED AGAINST US BUSINESS INTERESTS! This is why Maryland neo-liberals will vote for war...they are corporate pols and not democrats!
Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski says she supports Syria strike5
Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., said on Monday that she would support U.S. airstrikes against Syria. (Getty Images / September 9, 2013)
By John Fritze The Baltimore Sun 7:28 p.m. EDT, September 9, 2013
The dean of Maryland's congressional delegation and a prominent voice in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, said on Monday that she supports giving President Barack Obama authorization to strike Syria.
"I believe the president's plan is the best response to protecting U.S. security interests in the region," Mikulski, the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said during a lengthy speech on the Senate floor.
"Therefore…after really great reflection and as much due diligence as I could do, I want to announce today to my colleagues and most of all to the people of Maryland who have supported me, that I will support the president's request for a targeted, limited military action against the Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime in response to the horrific, grim and ghoulish use of chemical weapons," she said.
The decision is potentially significant for members of Maryland's congressional delegation -- most of whom remain undecided on airstrikes in Syria -- as well as Democrats elsewhere who have been wary of the proposal. But it also came hours before Senate Democratic leaders said they would delay a vote on the measure set for Wednesday after several other lawmakers announced their opposition.
Mikulski, the longest serving woman in Congress, was one of 19 senators who voted against the Iraqi war resolution in 2002.
The announcement came as support for military action in Congress appeared increasingly questionable. It also came as Obama said he was open to an idea floated by Russia on Monday that Syria place its chemical weapons under international control and eventually destroy them in order to avoid a U.S. strike.
Maryland's other senator, Democrat Ben Cardin, has already cast a vote in favor of the resolution in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Senate had been expected to bring the measure to the floor for a key procedural vote on Wednesday, a day after Obama is set to address the nation. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said late Monday that vote would be postponned.
Mikulski said she has heard from thousands of constituents and acknowledged that the vast majority opposed military intervention. She emerged from a classified briefing last week saying she was confident Assad had used the weapons but undecided about whether a military strike was the best response.
"They don't want war," Mikulski said of her constituents. "And neither do I."
________________________________________
Regarding Mary Pat Clarke's endorsement of Mizeur for governor:
I think these two are a match because they are the good cops of the neo-liberal policy-machine. While they work to install all corporate policy and protect wealth and profit....THEY FEEL OUR PAIN....Mizeur is of course a Montgomery County pol getting to where she is by voting for neo-liberal policy and Mary Pat Clarke is a devoted Johns Hopkins pol working for corporate rule. The first sign of a campaign platform from Mizeur is her devotion to public parivate partnerships and Wall Street complex financial instruments to 'MOVE MARYLAND FORWARD' ----THE DAVOS SWITZERLAND MOTTO ALL NEO-LIBERALS EMBRACE.
Indeed, the two policies killing the American people and the future of democracy......Indebting the public to Wall Street credit while allowing Wall Street to steal trillions of dollars in the process....and handing all that is public to corporate hands under the guise that government does not have the money to operate by itself. MIZEUR AND CLARKE ARE AVID SUPPORTERS OF THIS MOVEMENT OF WEALTH TO THE TOP! So why would a democratic voter vote for either of these two neo-liberals? So far, because no democratic candidates are running and that is what is crony in Maryland's political machine. AS I HEAR ALL MARYLAND VOTERS SAY.....WE HAVE NO CANDIDATES FOR WHICH WE WANT TO VOTE AND INDEED, AS IN BALTIMORE THE TURNOUT FOR ELECTIONS IS LESS THAN 20%.
This is not free and fair elections and this condition exists because of crony political machines and captured media like WYPR....the neo-liberal corporate 'public' media!
Remember, Gansler, Anthony Brown/Ulman are raging Wall Street pols as well! WHERE IS THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE?
We are about to see a national public infrastructure funding bill that will send hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure building and we already see neo-liberals making sure that private contractors will get all of that money. Now, we know in Maryland private contractors are doing nothing but creating an environment of fraud and corruption and keeping Maryland and Baltimore labor from having strong job security and wages. We will see all of these funds go to pay to play schemes as global corporations from foreign countries are allowed to do national building so that US corporations get work in those countries....same for Maryland businesses getting work all across the country by giving work in Maryland to other states. ALL OF THIS WORKS AGAINST CITIZENS IN EACH STATE AND AGAINST JOB SECURITY AND WAGE/BENEFITS AND IT IS DONE DELIBERATELY.
Stop allowing neo-liberals to pretend the only way to have work it to give corporations everything they want!
O'Malley to sign public-private partnership bill tomorrow
April 08, 2013|By Erin Cox | The Baltimore Sun
Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown said a bill that would allow private companies to help build public works projects will get the governor's signature tomorrow.
Lawmakers approved the bill laying out rules for public-private partnerships on Monday afternoon, the last day of General Assembly session.
In an interview, Brown said the legislation two years in the making could allow a private company to finance the propose Purple Line, the Red Line or create a second crossing of the Nice Bridge connecting Charles County to Virginia.
"We're going to get back to the business of investing in Maryland," Brown said.
The proposal to allow private companies to bid on public projects failed last year. Brown, who led the administration's efforts to pass the bill, said the passed version gives more incentives for businesses to participate.
Between 6 and 10 percent of the capital budget, roughly $315 million a year, could be paid for private dollars when the program is in place.
__________________________________________________
This corporate attack on the American people requires that a very small group of the richest capture the support of the poor in their quest to rewrite US history and Constitution. All third world dictators always make sure the poor are given enough to survive in order to garner support. That is what is happening in this corporate takeover of America. The people most hurt by an attack on Democracy and the US Constitution will be people of color and indeed this massive corporate fraud of the past decade was aimed largely at the poor and working class. Yet, corporate pols are now putting on the face of the very people hurt to advance these terrible, autocratic policies.
When Al Sharpton is asked why he joined a Wall Street health spa attended by the fraudsters that fleeced people of color he said....I FOUGHT TO BE ABLE TO DO THIS. As a local black lawyer told me as well when I asked why there was no public justice in Maryland...where are the justice lawyers? ...he said as well.....IT'S ABOUT THE MONEY!
We need people who are now being co-opted to advance policy that will secure totalitarian capture of US democracy to think: DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU AND THE WEALTH THEY HAVE GIVEN YOU WILL STAY IN YOUR OR YOUR FAMILY'S HANDS FOR LONG?
OF COURSE NOT....an injustice for one becomes an injustice for all!
Cornel West and the Fight to Save the Black Prophetic Tradition
Monday, 09 September 2013 09:17 By Chris Hedges, TruthDig | Report
.There is an insidious and largely unseen effort by the White House to silence the handful of voices that remain true to the black prophetic tradition. This tradition, which stretches back to Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, has consistently named and damned the cruelty of imperialism and white supremacy. It has done so with a clarity and moral force that have eluded most other critics of American capitalism. President Barack Obama first displayed his fear of this tradition when he betrayed his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, abetting the brutal character assassination of one of the church’s most prophetic voices. And he has sustained this assault, largely through black surrogates such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, Tom Joyner and Steve Harvey, in vicious attacks on Cornel West.
“Jeremiah Wright was the canary in the mine,” West said when we met a few days ago in Princeton, N.J. “The black prophetic tradition has been emptied out. Its leaders have either been murdered or incarcerated. ... A lot of political prisoners who represent the black prophetic tradition [are] in jail. They have been in there for decades. Or we have leaders who have completely sold out. They have been co-opted. And these are the three major developments. With sold-out leaders you get a pacified followership or people who are scared.”
“The black prophetic tradition has been the leaven in the American democratic loaf,” West said. “What has kept American democracy from going fascist or authoritarian or autocratic has been the legacy of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Martin King, Fannie Lou Hamer. This is not because black people have a monopoly on truth, goodness or beauty. It is because the black freedom movement puts pressure on the American empire in the name of integrity, decency, honesty and virtue.”
The tradition is sustained by a handful of beleaguered writers and intellectuals, including Glen Ford and his Black Agenda Report, James Cone, Carl Dix, Bruce Dixon, Boyce Watkins, Yvette Carnell, Robin Kelley, Margaret Kimberley, Nellie Bailey, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, Maulana Karenga, Ajamu Baraka and Wright, but none have the public profile of West, who is routinely attacked by Obama’s black supporters as a “race traitor,” the equivalent of a “self-hating Jew” to hard-line supporters of Israel. It is understandable why this tradition frightens Obama. It exposes him as the ideological heir of Booker T. Washington, a black accommodationist whose core message to black people was, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, “adjustment and submission.” The wide swath of destruction Obama has overseen on behalf of the corporate state includes the eradication of most of our civil liberties and our privacy, the expansion of imperial war, the use of kill lists, abject subservience to Wall Street’s criminal class and the military-industrial complex, the relentless persecution of whistle-blowers, mass incarceration of poor people of color and the failure to ameliorate the increasing distress of the poor and the working class. His message to the black underclass in the midst of the corporate rape of the nation is drawn verbatim from the Booker T. Washington playbook. He tells them to work harder—as if anyone works harder than the working poor in this country—and obey the law.
“Obama is the highest manifestation of the co-optation that took place,” West said. “It shifted to the black political class. The black political class, more and more, found itself unable to tell the truth, or if they began to tell some of the truth they were [put] under surveillance, attacked and demonized. Forty percent of our babies are living in poverty, living without enough food, and Obama comes to us and says quit whining. He doesn’t say that to the Business Roundtable. He doesn’t say that to the corporate elites. He doesn’t say that to AIPAC, the conservative Jewish brothers and sisters who will do anything to support the Israeli occupation against Palestinians. This kind of neglect in policy is coupled with disrespect in his speeches to black folk, which the mainstream calls tough love.”
“He is a shell of a man,” West said of Obama. “There is no deep conviction. There is no connection to something bigger than him. It is a sad spectacle, sad if he were not the head of an empire that is in such decline and so dangerous. This is a nadir. William Trotter and Du Bois, along with Ida B. Wells-Barnett, were going at Book T tooth and nail. Look at the fights between [Marcus] Garvey and Du Bois, or Garvey and A. Philip Randolph. But now if you criticize Obama the way Randolph criticized Garvey, you become a race traitor and an Uncle Tom. A lot of that comes out of the Obama machine, the Obama plantation.”
“The most pernicious development is the incorporation of the black prophetic tradition into the Obama imperial project,” West said. “Obama used [Martin Luther] King’s Bible during his inauguration, but under the National Defense Authorization Act King would be detained without due process. He would be under surveillance every day because of his association with Nelson Mandela, who was the head of a ‘terrorist’ organization, the African National Congress. We see the richest prophetic tradition in America desecrated in the name of a neoliberal worldview, a worldview King would be in direct opposition to. Martin would be against Obama because of his neglect of the poor and the working class and because of the [aerial] drones, because he is a war president, because he draws up kill lists. And Martin King would have nothing to do with that.”
“We are talking about crimes against humanity—Wall Street crimes, war crimes, the crimes of the criminal justice system in the form of Jim Crow, the crimes against our working poor that have their backs pushed against the wall because of stagnant wages and corporate profits going up,” West said. “Abraham Heschel said that the distinctive feature of any empire in decline is its indifference to criminality. That is a fundamental feature of our time, an indifference to criminality, especially on top, wickedness in high places.”
“This is not personal,” West said. “This was true for [George W.] Bush. It was true for [Bill] Clinton. We are talking about an imperial system, manifest in Obama’s robust effort to bomb Syria. War crimes against Syrian children do not justify U.S. war crimes. We are talking about a corporate state and a massive surveillance and national security state. It operates according to its own logic. Profit on the one hand, and secrecy to hide imperial policy on the other. Jesse [Jackson] was the head house Negro on the Clinton plantation, just as Sharpton is the head house Negro on the Obama plantation. But there is a difference. Jesse was willing to oppose Clinton on a variety of issues. He marched, for example, against the welfare bill. But Sharpton loves the plantation. He will not say a critical word. It is sad and pathetic. We are living in the age of the sellout.”
“Garvey used to say that as long as black people were in America the masses of black people, the poor and the working class, would never be treated with respect, decency or fairness,” West said. “That has always been a skeleton in the closet, the fundamental challenge to the black prophetic tradition. It may very well be that black people will never be free in America. But I believe, and the black prophetic tradition believes, that we proceed because black people are worthy of being free, just as poor people of all colors are worthy of being free, even if they never will be free. That is the existential leap of faith. There is no doubt that with a black president the black masses are still treated unfairly, from stop and frisk to high unemployment, indecent housing and decrepit education.”
“It is a spiritual issue,” West said. “What kind of person do you choose to be? People say, ‘Well, Brother West, since the mass of black folk will never be free then let me just get mine.’ That is the dominant response. ‘I am wasting my time fighting a battle that can’t be won.’ But that is not what the black prophetic tradition is about. History is a mystery. Yes, it doesn’t look good. But the masses of black folk must be respected. Malcolm X used to say as long as they are not respected you could show me all the individual respect you want but I know it’s empty. That is the fundamental divide between the prophetic tradition and the sellouts.”
The tradition has been diminished by what West called the “emaciation” of the black press that once amplified the voices of black radicals. The decline of the black press and the consolidation of the media, especially the electronic media, into the hands of a few corporations means that those who remain faithful to this tradition have been shut out. West does not appear on MSNBC, where the black and white hosts serve as giddy cheerleaders for Obama, and was abruptly dropped as a scheduled guest on an edition of CBS’ “Face the Nation” that aired after the 50 anniversary of the march on Washington. The black prophetic tradition is rarely taught in schools, including primarily African-American schools, and West said that this deterioration threatens to extinguish the tradition.
“It no longer has a legitimacy or significant foothold in the minds of the black masses,” West said. “With corporate media and the narrowing of the imagination of all Americans, including black people, there is an erasure of memory. This is the near death of the black prophetic tradition. It is a grave issue. It is a matter of life and death. It means that the major roadblock to American fascism, which has been the black prophetic tradition, is gone. To imagine America without the black prophetic tradition, from Frederick Douglass to Fannie Lou Hamer, means an American authoritarian regime, American fascism. We already have the infrastructure in place for the police state.”
“Black intelligence and black suspicion is still there among the masses,” West said. “Black people are not stupid. We are not completely duped. We are just scared. We don’t think there is any alternative. This is re-niggerization of the black professional class. They have big money, nice positions, comfort and convenience, but are scared, intimidated, afraid to tell the truth and will not bear witness to justice. Those who are incorporated into the black professional and political class are willing to tolerate disrespect for the black masses and sip their tea and accept their checks and gain access to power. That is what niggerization is—keeping people afraid and intimidated.”
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Below you see Obama's former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, now Chicago's mayor coming out fighting for Wall Street! Rahm is a former investment banker and his appointment by Obama let all know Obama was Wall Street, not Main Street.
Here in Maryland O'Malley has stacked the Department of Education with education privatizers just as has Obama. All of Maryland Assembly democrats and Baltimore City Hall democrats support these policies because they are neo-liberals working for wealth and profit.
These pols are starting in Baltimore and now Prince George's County because these are heavily black areas with citizens having no leaders protecting them. Baltimore is raging in K-12 privatizing and Maryland is tops in university privatizing.
STOP RE-ELECTING NEO-LIBERAL INCUMBENTS! IF YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATION IS NOT RUNNING CANDIDATES AGAINST THESE NEO-LIBERALS IN PRIMARIES....THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!
Below we see why all of Chicago's labor and justice fought Emanuel's education and school closing policies...it wasn't about saving money....it was about privatizing with charters and Teach for America!
Diane Ravitch's blog A site to discuss better education for all « Jack Schneider: What Do Students Remember about Their Favorite Teacher? Wendy Lecker: Our Orwellian Education Policy, part 2 »
Chicago Bombshell! TFA Plans to Staff 52 New Charters as 50 Public Schools Die
By dianerav September 9, 2013 // 36 Edushyster obtained internal planning documents from Teach for America in Chicago.
The document displayed on her website shows plans for 52 new privately-managed charters that will open over the next five years.
These charters will be staffed largely by TFA’s young recruits, with five weeks of training.
Just weeks ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 public schools, claiming they were “underutilized.” But the school closures presented an opportunity to expand the charter sector.
EduShyster notes that the plan is symbolic of TFA’s new role:
“TFA has largely abandoned its earlier mission of staffing hard-to-fill positions in public schools, serving instead as a placement agency for urban charters. In Chicago, however, TFA’s role appears to go far beyond providing labor for the fast-growing charter sector. An internal TFA document indicates that the organization has a plan to dramatically expand the number of charter schools in the city.”
TFA has become the handmaiden of the privatization movement. Without TFA’s ready supply of eager and inexperienced young college graduates, willing to work long hours without a union and with meager wages, it would be impossible to expand these private-sector schools at such a rapid clip.
Since the projected hiring of many more TFA corps members coincides with the layoff of large numbers of Chicago public school teachers, it is safe to say that TFA is helping not only to privatize the Chicago public schools but to bust the union.
This may fit right in with the far-right ideals of the Walton Family Foundation, which gifted TFA with $50 million, but it somehow does not sound all that idealistic.
Imagine the new TFA recruiting poster: Join TFA and Privatize America’s Public Schools! Bust the Teachers’ Unions!
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