Citizens' Oversight Maryland---Maryland Progressives
CINDY WALSH FOR MAYOR OF BALTIMORE----SOCIAL DEMOCRAT
Citizens Oversight Maryland.com
  • Home
  • Cindy Walsh for Mayor of Baltimore
    • Mayoral Election violations
    • Questionnaires from Community >
      • Education Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Housing Questionnaire
      • Emerging Youth Questionnaire
      • Health Care policy for Baltimore
      • Environmental Questionnaires
      • Livable Baltimore questionnaire
      • Labor Questionnnaire
      • Ending Food Deserts Questionnaire
      • Maryland Out of School Time Network
      • LBGTQ Questionnaire
      • Citizen Artist Baltimore Mayoral Forum on Arts & Culture Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Transit Choices Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Activating Solidarity Economies (BASE)
      • Downtown Partnership Questionnaire
      • The Northeast Baltimore Communities Of BelAir Edison Community Association (BECCA )and Frankford Improvement Association, Inc. (FIA)
      • Streets and Transportation/Neighbood Questionnaire
      • African American Tourism and business questionnaire
      • Baltimore Sun Questionnaire
      • City Paper Mayoral Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Technology Com Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Biker's Questionnair
      • Homewood Friends Meeting Questionnaire
      • Baltimore Historical Collaboration---Anthem Project
      • Tubman City News Mayoral Questionnaire
      • Maryland Public Policy Institute Questionnaire
      • AFRO questionnaire
      • WBAL Candidate's Survey
  • Blog
  • Trans Pacific Pact (TPP)
  • Progressive vs. Third Way Corporate Democrats
    • Third Way Think Tanks
  • Financial Reform/Wall Street Fraud
    • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau >
      • CFPB Actions
    • Voted to Repeal Glass-Steagall
    • Federal Reserve >
      • Federal Reserve Actions
    • Securities and Exchange Commission >
      • SEC Actions
    • Commodity Futures Trading Commission >
      • CFTC Actions
    • Office of the Comptroller of the Currency >
      • OCC Actions
    • Office of Treasury/ Inspector General for the Treasury
    • FINRA >
      • FINRA ACTIONS
  • Federal Healthcare Reform
    • Health Care Fraud in the US
    • Health and Human Services Actions
  • Social Security and Entitlement Reform
    • Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP Actions
  • Federal Education Reform
    • Education Advocates
  • Government Schedules
    • Baltimore City Council
    • Maryland State Assembly >
      • Budget and Taxation Committee
    • US Congress
  • State and Local Government
    • Baltimore City Government >
      • City Hall Actions
      • Baltimore City Council >
        • Baltimore City Council Actions
      • Baltimore Board of Estimates meeting >
        • Board of Estimates Actions
    • Governor's Office >
      • Telling the World about O'Malley
    • Lt. Governor Brown
    • Maryland General Assembly Committees >
      • Communications with Maryland Assembly
      • Budget and Taxation Committees >
        • Actions
        • Pension news
      • Finance Committees >
        • Schedule
      • Business Licensing and Regulation
      • Judicial, Rules, and Nominations Committee
      • Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee >
        • Committee Actions
    • Maryland State Attorney General >
      • Open Meetings Act
      • Maryland Courts >
        • Maryland Court System
    • States Attorney - Baltimore's Prosecutor
    • State Comptroller's Office >
      • Maryland Business Tax Reform >
        • Business Tax Reform Issues
  • Maryland Committee Actions
    • Board of Public Works >
      • Public Works Actions
    • Maryland Public Service Commission >
      • Public Meetings
    • Maryland Health Care Commission/Maryland Community Health Resources Commission >
      • MHCC/MCHRC Actions
    • Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition
  • Maryland and Baltimore Development Organizations
    • Baltimore/Maryland Development History
    • Committee Actions
    • Maryland Development Organizations
  • Maryland State Department of Education
    • Charter Schools
    • Public Schools
    • Algebra Project Award
  • Baltimore City School Board
    • Charter Schools >
      • Charter Schools---Performance
      • Charter School Issues
    • Public Schools >
      • Public School Issues
  • Progressive Issues
    • Fair and Balanced Elections
    • Labor Issues
    • Rule of Law Issues >
      • Rule of Law
    • Justice issues 2
    • Justice Issues
    • Progressive Tax Reform Issues >
      • Maryland Tax Reform Issues
      • Baltimore Tax Reform Issues
    • Strong Public Education >
      • Corporate education reform organizations
    • Healthcare for All Issues >
      • Universal Care Bill by state
  • Building Strong Media
    • Media with a Progressive Agenda (I'm still checking on that!) >
      • anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com
      • "Talk About It" Radio - WFBR 1590AM Baltimore
      • Promethius Radio Project
      • Clearing the Fog
      • Democracy Now
      • Black Agenda Radio
      • World Truth. TV Your Alternative News Network.
      • Daily Censured
      • Bill Moyers Journal
      • Center for Public Integrity
      • Public Radio International
      • Baltimore Brew
      • Free Press
    • Far Left/Socialist Media
    • Media with a Third Way Agenda >
      • MSNBC
      • Center for Media and Democracy
      • Public Radio and TV >
        • NPR and MPT News
      • TruthOut
  • Progressive Organizations
    • Political Organizations >
      • Progressives United
      • Democracy for America
    • Labor Organizations >
      • United Workers
      • Unite Here Local 7
      • ROC-NY works to build power and win justice
    • Justice Organizations >
      • APC Baltimore
      • Occupy Baltimore
    • Rule of Law Organizations >
      • Bill of Rights Defense Committee
      • National Lawyers Guild
      • National ACLU
    • Tax Reform Organizations
    • Healthcare for All Organizations >
      • Healthcare is a Human Right - Maryland
      • PNHP Physicians for a National Health Program
      • Healthcare NOW- Maryland
    • Public Education Organizations >
      • Parents Across America
      • Philadelphia Public School Notebook thenotebook.org
      • Chicago Teachers Union/Blog
      • Ed Wize Blog
      • Educators for a Democratic Union
      • Big Education Ape
    • Elections Organizations >
      • League of Women Voters
  • Progressive Actions
    • Labor Actions
    • Justice Actions
    • Tax Reform Actions >
      • Baltimore Tax Actions
      • Maryland Tax Reform Actions
    • Healthcare Actions
    • Public Education Actions
    • Rule of Law Actions >
      • Suing Federal and State government
    • Free and Fair Elections Actions
  • Maryland/Baltimore Voting Districts - your politicians and their votes
    • 2014 ELECTION OF STATE OFFICES
    • Maryland Assembly/Baltimore
  • Petitions, Complaints, and Freedom of Information Requests
    • Complaints - Government and Consumer >
      • Sample Complaints
    • Petitions >
      • Sample Petitions
    • Freedom of Information >
      • Sample Letters
  • State of the Democratic Party
  • Misc
    • WBFF TV
    • WBAL TV
    • WJZ TV
    • WMAR TV
    • WOLB Radio---Radio One
    • The Gazette
    • Baltimore Sun Media Group
  • Misc 2
    • Maryland Public Television
    • WYPR
    • WEAA
    • Maryland Reporter
  • Misc 3
    • University of Maryland
    • Morgan State University
  • Misc 4
    • Baltimore Education Coalition
    • BUILD Baltimore
    • Church of the Great Commission
    • Maryland Democratic Party
    • Pennsylvania Avenue AME Zion Church
    • Maryland Municipal League
    • Maryland League of Women Voters
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Standard of Review
  • Untitled
  • WALSH FOR GOVERNOR - CANDIDATE INFORMATION AND PLATFORM
    • Campaign Finance/Campaign donations
    • Speaking Events
    • Why Heather Mizeur is NOT a progressive
    • Campaign responses to Community Organization Questionnaires
    • Cindy Walsh vs Maryland Board of Elections >
      • Leniency from court for self-representing plaintiffs
      • Amended Complaint
      • Plaintiff request for expedited trial date
      • Response to Motion to Dismiss--Brown, Gansler, Mackie, and Lamone
      • Injunction and Mandamus
      • DECISION/APPEAL TO SPECIAL COURT OF APPEALS---Baltimore City Circuit Court response to Cindy Walsh complaint >
        • Brief for Maryland Court of Special Appeals >
          • Cover Page ---yellow
          • Table of Contents
          • Table of Authorities
          • Leniency for Pro Se Representation
          • Statement of Case
          • Questions Presented
          • Statement of Facts
          • Argument
          • Conclusion/Font and Type Size
          • Record Extract
          • Appendix
          • Motion for Reconsideration
          • Response to Defendants Motion to Dismiss
          • Motion to Reconsider Dismissal
      • General Election fraud and recount complaints
    • Cindy Walsh goes to Federal Court for Maryland election violations >
      • Complaints filed with the FCC, the IRS, and the FBI
      • Zapple Doctrine---Media Time for Major Party candidates
      • Complaint filed with the US Justice Department for election fraud and court irregularities.
      • US Attorney General, Maryland Attorney General, and Maryland Board of Elections are charged with enforcing election law
      • Private media has a responsibility to allow access to all candidates in an election race. >
        • Print press accountable to false statement of facts
      • Polling should not determine a candidate's viability especially if the polling is arbitrary
      • Viability of a candidate
      • Public media violates election law regarding do no damage to candidate's campaign
      • 501c3 Organizations violate election law in doing no damage to a candidate in a race >
        • 501c3 violations of election law-----private capital
      • Voter apathy increases when elections are not free and fair
  • Maryland Board of Elections certifies election on July 10, 2014
  • Maryland Elections ---2016

January 31st, 2013

1/31/2013

0 Comments

 
WE CAN BRING MIDDLE/AFFLUENT CLASS FAMILIES INTO THE CITY WITHOUT SUSPENDING ALL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.  WHEN YOU RING-FENCE ALL LUXURY DEVELOPMENT TAX REVENUE OUT OF THE EDUCATION POT AND HAND COPIOUS MORE OUT FOR LUXURY DEVELOPMENT.....THAT CAUSES THE PROBLEMS BALTIMORE CITY SCHOOLS HAVE IN FUNDING.

THAT DOESN'T EVEN CONSIDER HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN FRAUD.

Equal Protection Under The Law is the backbone of a Rule of law democracy and as we see it has been suspended as regards criminal justice by class and now civil liberties such as democratic public education.  ALL OF THIS IS ILLEGAL AND WOULD SEIZE IF CHALLENGED IN COURT.  In Maryland the task for that challenge is the ACLU-MD but that organization has been captured by corporate interests and is actually working to move these policies forward.....a civil liberties organization working against civil liberties!

I want to take today to focus on the details of a school funding scheme that makes a complex financial instrument look like a plain vanilla wrapper.  Remember, all of this unnecessary administration is put in place merely to circumvent and hide illegal transactions just as Wall Street does, it has nothing to do with charitable donations.  As I showed in my past blog these animals have the school employees paying to support their own schools as the idea is to make individual schools businesses and businesses must be regressive and efficient to be profitable.

Baltimore City Hall and Mayor Rawlings-Blake with our state assembly and O'Malley have allowed for the complete takeover of public policy by NGOs and private non-profits and they have made corporate taxes profits and not liabilities.  So in Baltimore the wealthy and corporations simply donate to a school of their choice whether it be in their affluent communities or a vocational school attached to their businesses.......any other starve for revenue.  Winners and losers is the 'public' school policy in Baltimore......AND EVERY TIME THE LABOR, BE IT TEACHERS, ADMINISTRATORS, OR CROSSING GUARDS FOR SCHOOLS ARE THE LOSERS.This policy hits the underserved communities hard now as Baltimore is mostly poor and working class.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to foresee the future were the middle-class schools are the same.  THE GOAL IS TO HAVE ALL PUBLIC EDUCATION PRIVATE, ATTACHED TO A BUSINESS, AND CHILDREN TRACKED AND MONITORED BY THE CARTEL AT THE TOP.

THIS WILL NOT BE INTERESTING READING AS I WILL LIST THINGS, BUT IT IS GOOD TO SEE JUST ONE SMALL SNIPPET OF THE NON-PROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IN BALTIMORE.

Funding from the state and city is tiered so most schools in the city involve the lowest tiers of funding designated as underserved and disabled students.  The few schools slated for affluent families and upcoming affluent communities are the ones targeted with Advanced Placement designation and receive copious private funding in addition.  IT IS DISGUSTING IN ITS DISREGARD TO NEED AND JUSTICE.

Below you see one one large corporate private non-profit organized as an umbrella for other non-profits to contribute to individual schools.  You see the breakdown in funding for these schools almost always looks like this:  school's staff, schools community contributions, non-profit contributions, and special government funding over that allotted by the funding statutes.  This list is not complete.  It is all arbitrary and selective and it creates huge inequity in how all schools in the city are funded.  We have many schools in the city slated to close for refusal by the School Board to fund many in sustainable neighborhoods.  Regardless of these closings, there are obviously large numbers of schools failing to receive these special donations.  Almost all of those that do are in Enterprise Zones slated for affluent development.

What would happen if Baltimore simply had a normal tax structure with a normal, transparent distribution of city revenue?  ALL SCHOOLS COULD BE FUNDED EQUALLY AND ADEQUATELY!!!

First, let's look at the schools getting all of the private donor attention:

Bay Brook Elem                    Frederick Douglass High
Barclay Elem                         William Pinderhughes Elem
Calvin Rodwell Elem              Callaway Elem
City Springs Elem                   Samuel Coleridge Taylor
Guilford Elem                         Lakeland
Hilton Elem                             Tench Tilghman
John E Howard Elem              Patterson Park Charter
Wolfe St Academy                 St Frances Academy
Arlington Elem                       Arundel Elem
MLK Harlem Park                    Park Heights-US Dream                                                         Academy


Patterson Park Charter School (PPPCS):

To pay for more staff: 

PPPCS general operating fund---$7,500
PPPCS, INC                                        16,000
Creative Alliance                               1,600
State Farm                                          4,000
Henry and Ruth Blaustein Found    1,500
Enoch Pratt Library                           2,300
M and T Bank                                     2,800
Dresher Found                                  2,800
Hoffberger Found                             3,000

Higher Achievement Baltimore for PPPCS,
East Baltimore Achievement Center ----

Citi Bank                                             $5,000
Blaustein Found                                14,000
PPPCS matching                                1,700

Future Economic Environment
As with this 2012-2013 budget, the school has demonstrated resilience in the face of decreasing
revenues and increasing costs. The budget has been developed to limit the impact on the
school’s academic programs.
However, all forecasts that we are aware of, even if speculative, predict that future federal, state
and local revenues will not improve in future years, after a per-pupil reduction of $311 for the coming year and $106 for 2011-2012. YOU WILL HEAR GOV O'MALLEY CAMPAIGN ON HIS COMMITMENT TO EDUCATION FUNDING...ALL HIS FUNDING HAS GONE TO DEVELOPING CORPORATE/COLLEGE PROGRAMS. 

New union contracts will be negotiated for FY14 and we expect that cost of living increases will be modest as in the recent past, 1-2%. The biggest
unknown will remain the increase associated with promotion from one interval to the next.
Interval promotions are based on receiving 12 achievement units (AU’s) during the year and that
can be achieved by a proficient evaluation or a satisfactory evaluation plus 3 AU’s from other
sources. In the last two years, interval promotion increases were approximately 4%.
The net effect is that per pupil revenue will have to increase by 5-6% in order to maintain the
existing educational program. That is the driving force behind the school’s decision to establish
a serious fundraising/development effort. That effort will have to bear fruit relatively quickly to
mitigate the expected per pupil revenue shortfall.

Budget Assumptions and Considerations
1. Per pupil funding is assumed to be $9,007 as specified in the BCPS budget. This number is
based on a city-wide total enrollment projection that will only be certain on September 30.
However, the forecast will be revised before then, and we can reduce enrollment if per pupil is projected higher. We are explicitly budgeting so that any increase in per pupil will translate directly to a smaller enrollment. 

THIS MEANS IT IS THEIR GOAL TO MOVE FROM AN UNDERSERVED STUDENT POPULATION THAT RECEIVES LOW PER-STUDENT FUNDING TO A MIDDLE-CLASS/AFFLUENT STUDENT POPULATION GETTING MORE FUNDING.  IT IS VERY CONFUSING WHEN THERE IS SO MUCH DISCRIMINATION.

This is my point.  I do not hate charters that are used for innovative education....we have had them for years.  I hate charters that exist for development purposes and are selective and are categorized as public.  They are getting all of the public funding all schools get plus all of the private donations listed above and that list is only for one Umbrella non-profit.....there is no doubt much more being targeted to this one school.

Patterson Park is a majority underserved minority community of primarily black and Hispanic families now but the push is for the affluent community development of East Baltimore Development Corporation----Johns Hopkins.  That is why you hear of the expected structural deficit being relieved by per-pupil funding increases as the ratio of underserved moves to middle-class and it is why these schools are getting the private funding.   These underserved families have been denied good schools for decades as city schools received even less in funding and resources.  Now that the focus becomes building good schools, many of these families are seeing their children unable to get in to the school or finding encouragement to leave.

Future Economic Environment

Total teacher compensation is budgeted to be $49,000 less for teachers hired to replace teachers who are leaving. Administration believes this can be accomplished without compromising teacher quality, e.g. three new teachers will be interns from this year whose quality is known.

The plan is to move more teachers with experience and equity out of the system.  Right now the teacher's unions have held on to charters but we know the objective is to end the union requirement and all it takes is one law passed by the general assembly......COMING TO YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD SOON.  TEACH FOR AMERICA.  Also, the pay raise scheme that is happening all across the country of 1-2 % is almost nothing and will not sustain a professional educator.  Good people will not be tied to $25






0 Comments

January 30th, 2013

1/30/2013

0 Comments

 
BALTIMORE NEEDS A MAYOR THAT WILL NOT SEND ALL POWERS OF THE CITY SCHOOLS TO THE STATE IN AN ATTEMPT TO CIRCUMVENT WHAT THE CITIZENS WANT TO SEE IN EDUCATION REFORM!!!

GOV O'MALLEY, LT GOV ANTHONY BROWN, AND MAGGIE MCINTOSH ARE ALL THE FACE OF THIS EDUCATION REFORM AT THE STATE OF MARYLAND LEVEL


I would like to stay with education as a topic for the next few days by repeating yesterday's issues.....teachers and administrators are under attack and it has nothing to do with quality of education and nothing to do with democratic education.  Maryland and especially Baltimore has instituted laws surrounding education reform that are not constitutional.  You cannot simply pass a law that says a charter school given special allowances to circumvent all kinds of public education requirements will be called 'public charters'.....IT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE AND IF THESE LAWS WERE CHALLENGED IN COURT THEY WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED! 

Brown v. Board of Education

From Wikipedia,
Decided May 17, 1954

Holding Segregation of students in public schools violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because separate facilities are inherently unequal.

This is not only about race as it led to equal rights guarantees to all people, most notably children with disabilities/income class.  The key statement is 'BECAUSE SEPARATE FACILITIES ARE INHERENTLY UNEQUAL'.


Equal Protection Clause

From Wikipedia

The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."[1] The Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause applies only to state governments, but the requirement of equal protection has been read to apply to the federal government as a component of Fifth Amendment due process.

What Third Way corporate democrats along with Republicans are trying to do is eliminate this Constitutional interpretation by ignoring it.  This is why O'Malley under the direction of Obama pressed for special clauses in charter agreements that allowed for separate funding of schools (private donors), tiered level of funding per student (Advanced Placement gets the most.....underserved less, and disabled the least).  They allow a school choice and lottery that openly has schools selecting students in and out arbitrarily in an effort to gentrify.  The bottom line is this:  We are watching as O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake with the help of Baltimore City Council work to end Brown vs Board of Education and violate all Equal Protection laws all while keeping the title of 'public' charter.

Here in Baltimore the disparity is stark.  We always had separate schools as desegregation brought white flight.  I don't know if most people are concerned with the idea that we need integration of schools.  THE ISSUE IS THAT IS A DECISION A PARENT MAKES.  IF A PARENT HAS NO CHOICES THEY ARE NOT MAKING A DECISION.  So we have schools for only disabled and schools for underserved.  We have schools attached to businesses with vocational tracks and schools that house at-risk students and all of it is funded differently AND NONE OF IT IS CONSTITUTIONAL.

I could extend all of these issues with education to housing and the development plans that are excluding according to socioeconomic parameters....all of which determines the quality of school your child will have according to these reforms.  WE THE PEOPLE DID NOT TELL OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS WE WANTED OUR DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL SYSTEM DISMANTLED......AND WE WILL NOT ALLOW IT!!

To add to the inherent violations of Equal Access in Education is this placement of grads in underserved schools where they are almost always from elite schools as is the case in Baltimore.  The very college grads who would have the most ability to find jobs are taking jobs that should serve as a pathway for people living in the school's community.  ALL PATHWAYS FOR ADVANCEMENT ARE DICTATED OUTSIDE OF THE COMMUNITY ITSELF AND THAT IS NOT DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION.  Then to place vocational charters in underserved communities or track the underserved to these charters under the guise of school choice IS NOT DEMOCRATIC OR LEGAL.

__________________________________________________


IF THERE IS ANYONE OUT THERE THAT DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THAT EDUCATION REFORM AS IT IS BEING DONE NOW IS ABOUT PRIVATIZING PUBLIC EDUCATION INTO PRIVATE VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS ATTACHED TO BUSINESS INTERESTS.......THAT IS WHAT IS HAPPENING!!!! THIRD WAY CORPORATE POLS ARE PUSHING FOR YOUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS INTO THE HANDS OF WALL STREET.

WE NEEDED TO REFORM OUR SCHOOLS NO DOUBT, BUT THIS IS NOT WHAT DEMOCRATIC REFORM LOOKS LIKE....THIS IS WHAT ENDING BROWN VS BOARD OF EDUCATION LOOKS LIKE!!!!

Mr. President, Education Is a Human Right, Not a Product
Thursday, 10 January 2013 09:10 By Bill Ayers, Truthout | Op-Ed

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on education and budget priorities, while Jack Lew, Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, right, and Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, look on at the Parkville Middle School and Center of Technology, in Baltimore on February 14, 2011. (Photo: Drew Angerer / The New York Times)

The landscape of “educational reform” is currently littered with rubble and ruin and wreckage on all sides. Sadly, your administration has contributed significantly to the mounting catastrophe. You’re not alone: The toxic materials have been assembled as a bipartisan endeavor over many years, and the efforts of the last several administrations are now organized into a coherent push mobilized and led by a merry band of billionaires including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Sam Walton, and Eli Broad.

Whether inept or clueless or malevolent—who’s to say?—these titans have worked relentlessly to take up all the available space, preaching, persuading, promoting, and, when all else fails, spreading around massive amounts of cash to promote their particular brand of school change as common sense. You and Secretary Arne Duncan—endorsed in your efforts by Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a host of reactionary politicians and pundits—now bear a major responsibility for that agenda.

The three most trumpeted and simultaneously most destructive aspects of the united “school reform” agenda are these: turning over public assets and spaces to private management; dismantling and opposing any independent, collective voice of teachers; and reducing education to a single narrow metric that claims to recognize an educated person through a test score. While there’s absolutely no substantive proof that this approach improves schooling for children, it chugs along unfazed—fact-free, faith-based reform at its core, resting firmly on rank ideology rather than any evidence whatsoever.

The three pillars of this agenda are nested in a seductive but wholly inaccurate metaphor: Education is a commodity like any other—a car or a refrigerator, a box of bolts or a screwdriver—that is bought and sold in the marketplace. Within this controlling metaphor the schoolhouse is assumed to be a business run by a CEO, with teachers as workers and students as the raw material bumping along the assembly line while information is incrementally stuffed into their little up-turned heads.

It’s rather easy to begin to think that “downsizing” the least productive units, “outsourcing” and “privatizing” a space that was once public, is a natural event. Teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the “outcomes” (winners and losers) becomes a rational proxy for learning; “zero tolerance” for student misbehavior turns out to be a stand-in for child development or justice; and a range of sanctions on students, teachers, and schools—but never on lawmakers, foundations, corporations, or high officials (they call it “accountability”)—is logical and level-headed.

I urge you to resist these policies and reject the dominant metaphor as wrong in the sense of inaccurate as well as wrong in the sense of immoral.  

Education is a fundamental human right, not a product. In a free society education is based on a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being; it’s constructed on the principle that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each, and, conversely, that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all. Further, while schooling in every totalitarian society on earth foregrounds obedience and conformity, education in a democracy emphasizes initiative, courage, imagination, and entrepreneurship in order to encourage students to develop minds of their own. 

When the aim of education and the sole measure of success is competitive, learning becomes exclusively selfish, and there is no obvious social motive to pursue it. People are turned against one another as every difference becomes a potential deficit. Getting ahead is the primary goal in such places, and mutual assistance, which can be so natural in other human affairs, is severely restricted or banned. It’s no wonder that cheating scandals are rampant in our country and fraudulent claims are commonplace.

Race to the Top is but one example of incentivizing bad behavior and backward ideas about education, as the Secretary of Education begins to look and act like a program officer for some charity rather than the leading educator for all children: It’s one state against another, this school against that one, and my second grade in fierce competition with the second grade across the hall.

You have opposed privatizing social security, pointing out the terrible risks the market would impose on seniors if the voucher plan were ever adopted. And yet you’ve supported—in effect—putting the most endangered young people at risk through a similar scheme. We need to expand, deepen, and fortify the public space, especially for the most vulnerable, not turn it over to private managers. The current gold rush of for-profit colleges gobbling up student loans is but one cautionary tale.

You’ve said that you defend working people and their right to organize and yet you have publicly and noisily maligned teachers and their unions on several occasions. You need to consider that good working conditions are good teaching conditions, and that good teaching conditions are good learning conditions. We can’t have the best learning conditions if teachers are forced away from the table, or if the teaching corps is reduced to a team of short-termers and school tourists.

You have declared your support for a deep and rich curriculum for all students regardless of circumstance or background, and yet your policies rely on a relentless regimen of standardized testing, and test scores as the sole measure of progress.

You should certainly pause and reconsider. What’s done is done, but you can demonstrate wisdom and true leadership if you pull back now and correct these dreadful mistakes.

In a vibrant democracy, whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children. Arne Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (as did our three sons); you sent your kids to Lab, and so did your friend Rahm Emanuel. There, students found small classes, abundant resources, and opportunities to experiment and explore, ask questions and pursue answers to the far limits, and a minimum of time-out for standardized testing. They found, as well, a respected and unionized teacher corps, people who were committed to a life-long career in teaching and who were encouraged to work cooperatively for their mutual benefit (and who never would settle for being judged, assessed, rewarded, or punished based on student test scores).

If it's good enough for you, good enough for the privileged, then it must be good enough for the kids in public schools everywhere—a standard to be aspired to and worked toward. Any other ideal for our schools, in the words of John Dewey who founded the school you chose for your daughters, “is narrow and unlovely; acted upon it destroys our democracy.”



HERE IS A COMMENT FROM A TEACHER:

Until Teach for America becomes committed to training lifetime educators and raises the length of service to five years rather than two, I will not allow TFA to recruit in my classes. The idea of sending talented students into schools in impoverished areas, and then after two years encouraging them to pursue careers in finance, law, and business in the hope that they will then advocate for educational equity really rubs me the wrong way.

It was not always thus. Ten years ago, when a Teach for America recruiter first approached me, I was enthusiastic about the idea of recruiting my most idealistic and talented students for work in poor schools. I allowed TFA representative to make presentations in my classes, filled with urban studies and African American studies majors. Several of my best students applied, all of whom wanted to become teachers, and most of whom came from the kind of high-poverty neighborhoods where TFA proposed to send its recruits.

Not one of them was accepted!

Enraged, I did a little research and found that Teach for America had accepted only four of the nearly one hundred Fordham students who applied. I become even angrier when I read in the New York Times that TFA had accepted forty-four of one hundred applicants from Yale that year. Something was really wrong if an organization which wanted to serve low-income communities rejected every applicant from Fordham, students who came from those very communities, and accepted half of the applicants from an Ivy League school where very few of the students, even students of color, come from working-class or poor families.

Since then, the percentage of Fordham students accepted into Teach for America has marginally increased, but the organization has done little to win my confidence that it is seriously committed to recruiting people willing to make a lifetime commitment to teaching and administering schools in high-poverty areas.

Never, in its recruiting literature, has Teach for America described teaching as the most valuable professional choice that an idealistic, socially-conscious person can make. Nor do they encourage the brightest students to make teaching their permanent career; indeed, the organization goes out of its way to make joining TFA seem a like a great pathway to success in other, higher-paying professions.

Three years ago, a TFA recruiter plastered the Fordham campus with flyers that said “Learn how joining TFA can help you gain admission to Stanford Business School.” The message of that flyer was “use teaching in high-poverty areas a stepping stone to a career in business.” It was not only profoundly disrespectful to every person who chooses to commit their life to the teaching profession, it advocated using students in high-poverty areas as guinea pigs for an experiment in “resume-padding” for ambitious young people.


Why Teach For America Is Not Welcome in My Classroom

By Mark Naison

Every spring, without fail, a Teach for America recruiter approaches me and asks if they can come to my classes and recruit students for TFA, and every year, without fail, I give them the same answer.

“Sorry.”

Until Teach for America becomes committed to training lifetime educators and raises the length of service to five years rather than two, I will not allow TFA to recruit in my classes.  The idea of sending talented students into schools in impoverished areas, and then after two years encouraging them to pursue careers in finance, law, and business in the hope that they will then advocate for educational equity really rubs me the wrong way.

It was not always thus.  Ten years ago, when a Teach for America recruiter first approached me,  I was enthusiastic about the idea of recruiting my most idealistic and talented students for work in poor schools.  I allowed TFA representative to make presentations in my classes, filled with urban studies and African American studies majors.  Several of my best students applied, all of whom wanted to become teachers, and most of whom came from the kind of high-poverty neighborhoods  where TFA proposed to send its recruits.

Not one of them was accepted!

Enraged, I did a little research and found that Teach for America had accepted only four of the nearly one hundred Fordham students who applied.  I become even angrier when I read in the New York Times that TFA had accepted forty-four of one hundred applicants from Yale that year.  Something was really wrong if an organization which wanted to serve low-income communities rejected every applicant from Fordham, students who came from those very communities, and accepted half of the applicants from an Ivy League school where very few of the students, even students of color, come from working-class or poor families.

Since then, the percentage of Fordham students accepted into Teach for America has marginally increased, but the organization has done little to win my confidence that it is seriously committed to recruiting people willing to make a lifetime commitment to teaching and administering schools in high-poverty areas.

Never, in its recruiting literature, has Teach for America described teaching as the most valuable professional choice that an idealistic, socially-conscious person can make.  Nor do they encourage the brightest students to make teaching their permanent career; indeed, the organization goes out of its way to make joining TFA seem a like a great pathway to success in other, higher-paying professions.

Three years ago, a TFA recruiter plastered the Fordham campus with flyers that said “Learn how joining TFA can help you gain admission to Stanford Business School.”  The message of that flyer was “use teaching in high-poverty areas a stepping stone to a career in business.”  It was not only profoundly disrespectful to every person who chooses to commit their life to the teaching profession, it advocated using students in high-poverty areas as guinea pigs for an experiment in “resume-padding” for ambitious young people.

In saying these things, let me make it clear that my quarrel is not with the many talented young people who join Teach for America, some of whom decide to remain in the communities they work in and become lifetime educators.  It is with the leaders of the organization, who enjoy the favor with which TFA is regarded with by captains of industry, members of Congress, the media, and the foundation world.  They have used this access to move rapidly to positions as heads of local school systems, executives in charter school companies, and educational analysts in management consulting firms.

The organization’s facile circumvention of the grinding, difficult, but profoundly empowering work of teaching and administering schools has created the illusion that there are quick fixes, not only for failing schools but for deeply entrenched patterns of poverty and inequality.  No organization has been more complicit than TFA in the demonization of teachers and teachers’ unions, and no organization has provided more “shock troops” for education reform strategies which emphasize privatization and high-stakes testing.  Michelle Rhee, a TFA recruit, is the poster child for such policies, but she is hardly alone.

Her counterparts can be found in New Orleans (where they led the movement toward a system dominated by charter schools), in New York (where they play an important role in the Bloomberg education bureaucracy) and in many other cities.

And the elusive goal of educational equity—how well has it fared in the years Teach for America has been operating?  Not only has there been little progress in the last fifteen years in narrowing the test score gap by race and class, but income inequality has become greater, in the last fifteen years than at any other time in modern American history.   TFA has done nothing to promote income redistribution, reduce the size of the prison population, encourage social investment in high-poverty neighborhoods, or revitalize the arts, science, and history in the nation’s schools.  TFA’s main accomplishment has been to marginally increase the number of talented people entering the teaching profession, but only a small fraction of those remain in the schools where they were originally sent.

But the most objectionable aspect of Teach for America—other than its contempt for lifetime educators—is its willingness to create another pathway to wealth and power for those already privileged in the rapidly expanding educational-industrial complex, which already offers numerous careers for the ambitious and well-connected.  An organization which began by promoting idealism and educational equity has become, to all too many of its recruits, a vehicle for profiting from the misery of America’s poor.

Mark Naison

Mark Naison is a Professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African American History, urban history, and the history of sports. His most recent book, White Boy: A Memoir, was published in the spring of 2002

Republished with permission from History News Network
________________________________________________
In Baltimore I watched as a wave of educators fired and sent packing had rippling effect across all communities of color.  These were the few people in these communities with good jobs and desperately needed income.  A few years later we have a Governor O'Malley and Mayor Rawlings-Blake bringing in military-style policing to handle the effects this destabilization had on an already stressed community.  IT IS MIND-BOGGLING HOW PEOPLE CAN BE SO DISINTERESTED IN HUMANITY WHEN THEY ARE TASKED WITH A MISSION DRIVEN SOLELY BY AFFLUENCY.

MAKE NO MISTAKE......THE NEED FOR LUXURY DEVELOPMENT IN URBAN AREAS IS NOT WHAT IS NEEDED FOR A HEALTHY CITY....IT WAS PLANNED AS A VISION OF MAKING A WORLD-CLASS CITY TO THE DETRIMENT OF MOST OF ITS CURRENT RESIDENTS.

Almost all academic study that is allowed to surface show that all of these policies but into place as reform hasn't shown any favorable affect NO MATTER HOW HARD MARTIN O'MALLEY TRIES TO FIX THE DATA!!


Among Obama supporters, the gap between popular perceptions of the president's policies and the actual content of those policies is nowhere wider than in public education. While the president pays lip service to the centrality of public education, teachers and parent input, his Race To The Top is paving the road to privatization, closing more public schools and firing more teachers than any president in US history.

Obama's Race To The Top Drives Nationwide Wave of School Closings, Teacher Firings

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

A nationwide epidemic of school closings and teacher firings has been underway for some time. It's concentrated chiefly in poor and minority communities, and the teachers let go are often experienced and committed classroom instructors, and likely to live in and near the communities they serve, and disproportionately black.

It's not an accident, or a reflection of changing demographics, or more educational choices suddenly becoming available to families in those areas. It's not due to greedy unionized teachers or the invisible hand of the marketplace or well-intentioned educational policies somehow gone awry.

The current wave of school closings is latest result of bipartisan educational policies which began with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and have kicked into overdrive under the Obama administration's Race To The Top. In Chicago, the home town of the president and his Secretary of Education, the percentage of black teachers has dropped from 45% in 1995 to 19% today. After winning a couple skirmishes in federal court over discriminatory firings in a few schools, teachers have now filed a citywide class action lawsuit alleging that the city's policy of school “turnarounds” and “transformations” is racially discriminatory because it's carried out mainly in black neighborhoods and the fired teachers are disproportionately black.

How did this happen? Where did those policies come from, and exactly what are they?

Beginning in the 1980s, deep right pockets like the Bradley and Walton Family Foundations spent billions to create and fund fake “grassroots movements.” They churned out academic studies and blizzards of media hype, first for vouchers, later on for charter schools and what’s become a whole panoply of privatization-oriented “education reforms” ranging from teacher merit pay to common core curriculum and more.  

Those billions paid off with the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act which made the right wing corporate agenda of undermining and ultimately privatizing public education national policy.  Though standardized test scores were long known to prove little aside from student family income, they suddenly became the gold standard for judging teacher & school performance.  School districts were required to purchase & give dozens of costly meaningless tests and to publish lists ranking their own schools and teachers as “failing” when test scores were low, which again, was mostly wherever students were poor.

Amid torrents of “blame the teachers” propaganda, so-called “failing schools” were required to hire expensive contractors with cockeyed “run the school like a business” remedies and more crackpot tests. Thus it was that NCLB spawned almost overnight an entire industry of jackleg educational consultants and test suppliers guaranteed a market with dollars diverted from already tight public school budgets. Those industries attracted capital investors, and began doing what every other industry does in the US ---- make big campaign contributions to politicians to get sweeter contracts and more favorable regulation.  When test scores still didn’t rise, NCLB required many schools to close, making openings for chains of charter schools, often highly profitable charter schools, bringing the blessings of “choice” and free market competition to the educational “marketplace.”

It was an unequal sort of “competition” though, because charter schools have always been allowed to pick and choose their students, to turn away those with special needs, and to hire teachers and principals with little or no relevant training.

Results in the classrooms of poor neighborhoods around the country were devastating.  Where in 1987-88 the modal year for teacher experience -- that’s the number of years the largest cohort of teachers had been in the classrooms ---  was ten years, by 2008 the biggest block of teachers were in their very first year, by definition --- the least confident, the least experienced and the least effective.  

This was the state of public education when President Obama walked into the White House door.  What did he do? Did he turn it around? Or did he double down? The answer is that in the spirit of corporate bipartisanship, president Obama sided with the charter school sugar daddies instead of black teachers, black parents and their children.

President Obama appointed Chicago Schools CEO Arne Duncan Secretary of Education. A champion of privatization, Duncan had closed dozens of Chicago schools, many on short notice, some at the apparent behest of gentrifying real estate developers.  Duncan fired so many veteran black Chicago teachers to , fill their slots with mostly white rookies, that teachers sued him for racial discrimination in federal court and won.  Duncan even introduced military charter schools in Chicago, in one case handing a west side middle school to the US Marine Corps.

No Child Left Behind had been passed by a Democratic congress in the first days of the Bush administration. Opposition to its policies was widespread, and much of that opposition was among Democratic constituencies. So President Obama's signature education policy initiative, would bypass Congress and the opportunity for public debate on the disastrous effects of existing pro-privatization policies.

Secretary Duncan at his side, President Obama introduced Race To The Top, drawn up by the Bill & Melinda Gates, the Eli Broad, Boeing, Walton Family and other foundations.  Under Race To The Top states and school districts are forced to bid against each other for many of the same education dollars they used to receive as a matter of course. The winning districts are those who apply Race To The Top's four official solutions to their so-called “failing schools.”

Race To The Top's four federally mandated “solutions,” which are never spelled out by corporate media news outlets, are “school transformations,” “school turnarounds,” “school restarts,”  and “school closures.”

Race to the Top defines a “school transformation,” its first remedy, as firing the principal and up to 50% of teachers, replacing them with temps and newbies, hiring expensive consultants, often the same folks who drafted Race To The Top guidelines or their cronies, to redesign curriculum and personnel policies. “Transformed” schools tie teachers jobs to test scores (that’s what caused the national epidemic of cheating scandals) lengthening school days with no extra pay, cutting wages & benefits and of course lots more costly and useless tests.

Race To The Top calls its second remedy “school turnaround.” Turnarounds are exactly the same as school transformations, with high priced “run the school like a business” consultants, increased reliance on standardized tests, sanctions for teachers and all new hires sourced from Teach For America type agencies, except that transformations fire up to 50% of school staff, but to be called a turnaround schools must fire at least 50% of school staff.

“School restarts,” are the third Race To The Top solution. In a “restart” you close the public school and reopen a new school with new staff and the same connected consultants used for transformations and turnarounds, but all under the management of a private corporation. In other words, you close the public school and open a charter school in the same building. Charters of course can use public money to hire even less qualified teachers, pick and choose the students it serves, and often to generate handsome private profits.

Race To The Top's fourth remedy is “school closure.” You fire the staff, padlock the school doors and let families take their chances on the free market, or find another public school if they can.

The states and school districts quickest to carry out the most transformations, turnarounds, restarts and school closings are the ones who get to keep or increase their levels of federal funding. Those who drag their feet lose federal education dollars. That's why it's a race, but not exactly to the top.

Clearly there's no broad support for these insanely destructive educational policies. But since news media never report what Race To The Top's actual requirements are, or even that a nationwide wave of school closings and teacher firings is underway, much of the public, and even many teachers and their unions are unable to make the connection between federal policies and their local school crises. Corporate media point helpfully instead to corrupt local officials, greedy organized teachers insufficient reliance on the invisible hand of the free market. News reports in many areas are full of stories about school districts whose certification is imperiled because of looming loss of federal funds, but the public is offered few clues as to exactly WHY the funds are lacking or WHAT measures the district will have to take to get them restored. The fact is, Race To The Top is consciously designed to punish school districts that try to protect their educational assets, and rewards those who eviscerate and sell them off.

President Obama's Race To The Top then, is the direct cause of our national wave of school closings and mass teacher firings from Philly to Atlanta and Los Angeles to Rhode Island. It was local implementation of Obama's Race To The Top mandates that forced Chicago teachers out on strike last fall, and it's reluctance to carry out these measures that now imperils education funding in cities as large as Las Vegas.

The Chicago teachers class action lawsuit is a good thing. But the courts have been captive to the far right wing for a long time now, and are not likely to issue quick and sweeping rulings that upset things as they are. In the end, the only thing that will begin to save public education, that will halt the wave of school closings and teacher firings is mass mobilization on a scale not seen in fifty years. Right now, that seems almost as unlikely as corporate school reform being reversed or halted by the federal court.

What passes for black leadership these days, the descendants of the old line “civil rights” organizations are firmly on the corporate education reform bandwagon. Bill Gates, for example, delivered the 2011 keynote at the National Urban League's annual meeting. The NAACP and similar outfits are no better, all preferring to do the bidding of their funders and their president, over the interests of ordinary black families and their children. Even teachers unions are handicapped. Unlike the Chicago Teachers Union most haven't spent the last few years forging deep ties with organized forces in their school communities, and lack even a tradition of standing up for their own members they way labor unions ought to.

In human history, the notion that everybody is entitled to a quality public education is still relatively new, and has powerful enemies. President Obama is one of these. It was the insistence of newly freed slaves that led to the first universal public education laws in the South. African American leaders till now have always been stalwart champions of public education. Until we raise up a new crop of leaders and movements not beholden to corporate funding, not disposed to uncritical worship of corporate power wielded by a black face, public education will continue to wither and die.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. Contact him via this site's contact page, or at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

_________________________________________________


0 Comments

January 29th, 2013

1/29/2013

0 Comments

 
For those that say the working class do not need labor protections from unions so let them work like third world poor consider that these work conditions are hitting college educated workers as well.  Remember, the protesters in Egypt and other autocratic countries are professionals impoverished by regimes.   So, when educators, health care professionals, and postal employees hit the protest trail you see a war against all labor not only the working class. As Governor O'Malley and Mayor Rawlings-Blake duped the voters regarding the gambling referendum by saying these would be good paying jobs....that minorities would be hired to these good paying jobs.....that profits would go to education, THEY WERE LYING TO YOUR FACE YET AGAIN AND THE PEOPLE HAVE SAID ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.  Every member of Baltimore City Council knew the move would be to have casinos without unions.....they knew that most of the hiring would have the best paid brought in from out of area and the positions for the minority workers would be horrible working conditions with part time work with continuously changing shifts and duties.  The Baltimore City Council and Maryland Assembly has not even addressed the 'felon' issue as regards Baltimore citizens as O'Malley's and Rawlings-Blake war on the poor has many people guilty of simply loitering registering as felons.  THERE IS NO INTENT TO HIRE ANY MINORITIES IN JOBS THAT WON'T BE EXPLOITATIVE.

What about those funds for education from gambling proceeds?  Well, we see already one county using the funds to pay for the transportation services from BWI to the casino and with the Baltimore casino we see the City pols already using taxpayer money to train casino staff.......that's the education these pols will give you with these gambling proceeds.  So, the labor unions, the teacher's unions, the justice organizations that all worked to get gambling approved WERE ALL SCREWED BY BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND POLITICIANS.  THIS IS WHY O'MALLEY AND RAWLINGS-BLAKE ARE MOVING TO NATIONAL POSITIONS......WHEN IT COMES TO CONNING THE PUBLIC FOR CORPORATE PROFITS.....THEY ARE TEAM PLAYERS!!!

Ever more seriously is the attack on our postal service.  Third Way corporate democrats like Maryland's pols voted with the Republicans for policy designed to starve the Post Office of revenue.....killing it by taking its ability to compete with private services like FedX and UPS.  So, policy like taking Postal meters and postage stamps away from the Post Office and allowing sales everywhere took away great revenue from the Post Office as it does foot traffic that would lead to mailing.  Allowing private post offices to open when the need wasn't there all worked to take traffic away from the Post Office and place them with private carriers like UPS and FedX.  DID WE NEED COMPETITION WITH THE POST OFFICE WHICH HAD US PAYING PENNIES TO SEND A LETTER UNTIL IT WAS FORCED TO COMPETE WITH PRIVATE PROFIT?

IT IS ALL ABOUT THE PROFIT, NOT THE SERVICE AND THAT IS WHY THEY ARE SYSTEMATICALLY KILLING THE POST OFFICE.   The nail in the coffin was the policy of pre-paying employee pensions to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.  Now, if you are making the Post Office compete with private companies that do not pre-pay their pensions are you really creating a fair and free market?  Of course not, you are trying to kill a public service.  THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS VOTED WITH REPUBLICANS TO CREATE THIS BURDEN THAT IS KILLING YOUR LAST METHOD OF PUBLIC COMMUNICATION!!!

How important is the fact that the post office is our only PUBLIC method of communication?  IT IS HUGE!!!! Think about how you will be able to afford the rates if private industry is allowed to go without competition.  We are seeing our phone bills become unbearable......we are seeing computer rates becoming unbearable......we will see our package rates become unbearable if the Post Office is not there.  SO HOW WILL PEOPLE COMMUNICATE IF RATES ARE TOO HIGH?  HOW LONG WILL GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZE THE POOR? 

THEY WILL NOT.  JUST AS WITH ENERGY COSTS THESE SUBSIDIES TO THE POOR WILL END AND A VAST NUMBER OF PEOPLE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO HAVE ENERGY, HEALTH CARE, AND NOW COMMUNICATIONS ABILITY.  WHO ARE THOSE POOR.......LOOK AT EGYPT AND GREECE TO SEE PROFESSIONALS OF ALL STRIPES AS POOR AS ANY!!!!!

Lastly today let's look at another professional class being driven into poverty as yet another democratic platform is crushed by Third Way corporate democrats.  The teaching profession.  University campuses have always been the place of democratic activism and free speech as tenured professors were able to speak freely against government corruption and tyranny.  So, if you are building a corrupt and tyrannic society the first thing you want to do is get rid of the university campuses and those pesky academics........and that is what Third Way corporate democrats like O'Malley and Obama are doing.  This is why universities and colleges are being filled with adjuncts from the business-world who are only connected to the college as a part-timer......it is why we are seeing tenured positions disappear as academics are now afraid to speak and are indeed silent as the greatest transition from free and democratic to corrupt and autocratic happens right before us.  EVERYONE IS FEARFUL OF LOSING JOBS AT A PERIOD WHEN JOBS ARE BEING HELD DELIBERATELY SCARCE.  EVEN FACEBOOK ENTRIES ARE KEPT CLEAN OF DEBATE AS THESE SOCIAL MEDIA ARE SURVEILLED TO AN INCH OF THEIR LIVES.   This is deliberate silencing of political voice and academics are the foundation of  political voice.

Below you'll see what is happening across the country with all levels of education......K-college.  Teachers are being made paupers as their jobs are marginalized by manufactured budget cuts.  Part-time, Teach for America, principals required to pay back salaries in order to finance their schools as they are in Baltimore.....all of this is disturbing and unacceptable and all driven by Obama, O'Malley, and Third Way corporate democrats across the country.


YOUR THIRD WAY POL IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IMPOVERISHER.  THEY KNOW THAT TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CORPORATE FRAUD WOULD PAY FOR ALL OF THE NEEDS OF STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS BUT THEY KEEP CUTTING PUBLIC SERVICES/PROGRAMS AS CORPORATIONS BECOME FABULOUSLY WEALTHY.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!

Working Without Pay January 18, 2013 - 3:00am By Colleen Flaherty
Inside Higher Ed


College food drives are usually organized by student groups aiming to serve needy off-campus populations. The one this week at Kalamazoo Valley Community College in Michigan is different. It’s benefiting part-time faculty members who can’t make ends meet until their late paychecks arrive at the beginning of next month.

“This really came as surprise to a lot of people,” and the recent holidays and current tax season haven’t left many part-time faculty with a financial cushion, said Kelly O’Leary, part-time French and English instructor and co-president of the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Federation of Teachers, the part-time faculty union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers in Michigan. About 300 part-time instructors, many of whom were expecting to be paid on Tuesday as usual, won’t be paid until Feb. 1 due to administrative issues.

“We have a number of single moms trying to support kids,” O’Leary said. “I don’t think people understand that they’re below poverty wages.”

To help bridge the gap, the union launched the food drive on Jan. 11. Since then, it has been flooded with food donations and gift cards to Meijer supermarket, where faculty can buy more food, gas and prescriptions. “We’ve had part-time faculty coming out of the woodwork saying, ‘I’m a diabetic and I need to buy insulin,’ ” said the union's co-president, Catherine Barnard, a part-time psychology instructor. “At first, we didn’t even think about medication, but many of these people don’t have benefits.”

Because some part-time faculty have expressed shame at publicly accepting help, Barnard said she’s arranged via e-mail to meet part-time faculty in the parking lot or elsewhere on campus with donations. Most of the help has come from full-time faculty and part-time faculty with heavier course loads, and the drive is being promoted on the union's Facebook page, where O'Leary has posted a virtual "I am working without pay" button.

Kalamazoo Valley pays part-time faculty about $2,400 per course on a term-to-term basis, compared to about $10,000 per course for some full-time, permanent professors paid an annual salary (not taking into account other full-time faculty duties), Barnard said. (By way of comparison, a 2010 survey of non-tenure-track faculty members by the Coalition on the Academic Workforce showed the median compensation rate for adjuncts to be $2,700 per three-credit course.) Barnard estimated that most part-time faculty teach two or three courses on campus each semester, which, without picking up additional courses at other area institutions, would amount to an annual income of less than $15,000.

A union member notified leaders of the payday delay on Jan. 7, at the start of the semester. O’Leary said she attempted to meet with the administration to change the payday, to no avail (the union co-president said administrators blamed part-time faculty who were slow to turn in their semester paperwork and low staffing during the holiday period for the delay).

College officials reject the idea that the pay schedule should have taken part-time faculty by surprise. Michael Collins, vice president for student and college relations, said in an e-mail that the pay calendar was first posted on the college intranet in August 2012, and that full-time and part-time pay faculty pay schedules have differed from each other going as far back as 30 years (Kalamazoo Valley’s 129 full-time faculty were paid on Tuesday).

O’Leary disagreed with that statement, saying the part-time faculty pay date was included in the faculty calendar in an obscure place that did not show up on most people’s computer screens, and went missing from the calendar for prolonged periods during the fall semester. Additionally, she said, most faculty who expect their pay at a certain time each month don’t check the calendar to verify that it will be arriving. (In her nearly two decades of working at the college, she said pay had only been delayed once before, at the start of the fall 2011 semester. The union was formed shortly after.) She also pointed to state wage and earnings laws that guard against late payments after a routine pay schedule has been established by an employer, although such laws pertain to a biweekly or weekly pay schedule; the college typically pays faculty on the 1st and 15th of each month.

Although it’s not a permanent fix for part-time faculty, Nancy Beers, a part-time history instructor, said the drive has been welcome news to families such as hers, with Michigan’s tough job market (her husband was laid off last year and she’s picked up fewer courses this semester – four, compared to eight at three different campuses in the fall – than she would have liked).

“The only way we’ve made it [this month] is that we saved everything we could from last semester,” she said.

______________________________________________________


AS O'MALLEY SIGNS ON TO RACE TO THE TOP, HE REQUIRES SCHOOL TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS TO MEET ACCESSMENT REQUIREMENTS AND SALARY INCREASES BASED ON STUDENT PERFORMANCE.  BUT AS WE HEAR AGAIN AND AGAIN, FUNDING ISN'T THERE.....A CITY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL TOLD ME SHE'S SCRATCHING FOR MONEY FOR TOILET PAPER.  WE WERE TOLD THAT UNDERSERVED SCHOOLS WOULD GET HIGHER TEACHER PAY TO ATTRACT BEST TEACHERS.....WHAT WE SEE, JUST AS EXPECTED, THE HIGH PAY GOES TO THE WEALTHY COUNTIES WHILE THE UNDERSERVED SCHOOLS HAVE THE LOWEST PAY.  AFFLUENT SCHOOLS ARE SUPPLEMENTED BY PRIVATE DONATIONS.  NONE OF THESE POLICIES PRODUCE GOOD CLASSROOM PERFORMANCE, THEY ONLY MAKE TEACHING LESS ATTRACTIVE AS A CAREER.

City principals among lowest-paid school leaders in state School, union officials say new contract will make salaries more competitive City schools

CEO Andres Alonso, shown during a visit with The Sun's editorial board and reporters, has given the Baltimore system's principals more autonomy. (Christopher T. Assaf, Baltimore Sun / June 28, 2011)

By Erica L. Green, The Baltimore Sun 5:54 p.m. EST, February 2, 2012

YET THE QUASI-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION BELOW SOMEHOW GOT THESE SAME PRINCIPALS THAT WERE DESCRIBED AS THE LOWEST PAID IN THE STATE TO MAKE WHOPPING DONATIONS TO THEIR OWN SCHOOLS.......BASICALLY ERASING  ANY INCREASE IN THE CONTRACTS MENTIONED ABOVE. 

So the media is giving us the impression these school officials are being paid more when they are simply being made to give it back to keep their jobs (think about the Hispanic workers I spoke of who work in Baltimore's Enterprise Zones who told us they are paid a wage as demanded by Living Wage and Green Card laws and then forced to give back $5 an hour to keep their jobs)  THIS IS REALLY EVIL PEOPLE AND IT IS ALL DRIVEN BY JOHNS HOPKINS AND THEIR QUASI-GOVERNMENTAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES/NON-PROFITS

Waverly School Principal-------$20,000
Barclay School Principal -----  $8,750
Guilford School Principal ----- $20,000
Margaret Brent School Principal ----$3,434

THE SCHOOL'S STAFF ARE ALSO EXPECTED TO DONATE AS THESE WILL BE MATCHING FUNDS FOR LARGER DONATIONS.  REMEMBER, WE HAVE BUDGET DEFICITS BECAUSE OF MASSIVE CORPORATE FRAUD AND CORPORATE TAX BREAKS THAT HAVE THEM PAYING NOTHING......THIS IS THE PROBLEM AND THE PEOPLE ARE BEING MADE TO PAY THEIR WAGES IN DONATIONS AS WELL AS SEEING THEIR TAX REVENUE GIVEN TO THESE NGOs.......

THIS IS EVIL STUFF FOLKS!!!!!!

About FLBC The Family League of Baltimore City, Inc. is a quasi-governmental nonprofit organization that works with a range of partners to develop and implement initiatives that improve the well-being of Baltimore’s children, youth and families. The Family League’s work touches the lives of tens of thousands of Baltimore families each year.

The Family League is uniquely able to coordinate major initiatives, bring together a range of partners, and fashion new approaches to the city’s urgent problems.


HERE WE HAVE YET ANOTHER QUASI-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION DESIGNED TO FUNNEL PRIVATE MONEY TO DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS WITHOUT COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION AND WITH THE COMPLETE WISHES OF THE PEOPLE DONATING.....OR AT LEAST THE BIG DONORS AS WE SAW ABOVE, SOME OF THE LOW LEVEL DONORS ARE SIMPLY DONATING TO KEEP THEIR JOBS!!!!!
____________________________________________________





US Postal Service faces ruin without rescue from Congress, watchdog warns Inspector general David Williams says cash-strapped service, saddled with debt and low revenues, is in 'very serious trouble'

The USPS lost over $16bn last year, and has lost about $41bn over the past five years, according to estimates. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The chief postal watchdog has warned that the troubled US Postal Service will go out of business this year unless Congress acts to rescue it.

David Williams, the inspector general of the USPS, says the service is in "very serious trouble", after five years lumbered with heavy debt and falling revenues.

In an interview with the Guardian, Williams warns that Congress, which has been distracted by November's elections and the fiscal cliff crisis, must act this year to save the service.

The USPS lost over $16bn last year, and has lost about $41bn over the past five years, according to Robert Taub, a vice-chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission.

Since 2006, the postal service has been required – unlike any federal agency  – to pre-fund its retirement and healthcare benefits to workers. This costs it about $5.5bn a year. Currently, the post office has paid in $330bn for benefits, but the Office of Personnel Management recently told Williams that it will need $394bn to satisfy the legal requirement.  THIS IS A BIG REASON  WHY THE POST OFFICE IS STRAPPED AND THEY ARE USING THIS TO DISMANTLE OUR ONLY PUBLIC MEANS OF COMMUNICATION!!!!

At the same time, it has been unable to raise postal rates enough, because they are pegged to inflation, and inflation is low. (A long-awaited rise is coming on January 27, moving postal rates up by 2.75%).

The economic downturn in 2007 hit the postal service hard, as people sent less mail; it has also seen a steep decline in its most profitable product, first-class mail.

Richard Geddes, an assistant policy professor at Cornell and an American Enterprise Institute scholar who has studied the postal service, says first class mail has fallen from 103bn pieces in 2000 to just around 74bn pieces in 2011.

Even though it has shrunk from nearly 900,000 thousand employees in 1998 to about 530,000 now, many regulators and lawmakers see the US Postal Service's infrastructure as inefficient, and have talked about areas they would like to cut – the number of facilities that the USPS uses to process mail, for instance.

Williams, whose organisation audits the USPS, described the set of financial constraints on the service as "murder – it wasn't premeditated, but it was murder."

The postal service has reached its $15bn credit limit with the US Treasury, and has in effect run out of money."This is the year that they borrowed so much that they can't borrow any more," Williams said.

Asked whether the USPS will need a bailout this year, Williams replied: "Yes. The choices are that it would cease to exist or it would need a bailout." Williams said he did not expect the USPS to require taxpayer dollars, but instead that it would require congressional intervention, perhaps to reduce the pension payments.

The US Postal Service, which missed its last two payments into the benefit funds, has never made a single payment without having to borrow from the US Treasury. Ruth Goldway, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, notes the irony: the USPS pension payment goes to the US Treasury, so for the past five years it has been borrowing from the Treasury to pay the Treasury.

There are many possible solutions to the problem, but, as a start, Williams, Goldway and Taub believe that the pension payments should be reduced. "I favor a post office that is not burdened by this unrealistic pension obligation," Goldway said.

Goldway says the main reason for the dire financial state of the USPS is the debt it took on to meet its pension payments. "They wouldn't be in the situation they're in without having borrowed all this money," she said.

California congressman Darrell Issa, a Republican who has taken the lead on postal service reform along with congressman Dennis Ross, suggested last year that USPS employees should be required to pay into their health and life insurance benefits, like all federal workers.

Another school of thought holds that the postal service could shrink further, cutting staff and facilities. Williams suggests that if the post office took steps to reduce its size that it could save $12bn a year: "Which is more than enough to get them out of the trouble they're in."


__________________________________________________________________________________
IF YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS ARE NOT RUNNING LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES AGAINST INCUMBENTS.......THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!!!!!!  ARE YOUR LEADERS WORKING WITH THE CORPORATE POLS OR ARE THEY WORKING FOR YOU???????

November 2, 2012 Teachers unions in Ohio seek to elect educators to office By Sarah Butrymowicz Hechinger Report

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Special-education teacher Donna O’Connor and 23 of her colleagues gathered at their union’s headquarters here in January for a first-of-its-kind campaign boot camp. Prompted by an intense battle over collective bargaining that has pitted unions against a Republican-controlled State Assembly, the Ohio Education Association started grooming its own candidates to take back control of state education policy.

O’Connor, who is currently running for a House seat in the Columbus suburbs, felt her own sense of urgency as she learned how to fundraise, write speeches and debate during the union training sessions. “I started connecting the dots about seven years ago [that] I couldn’t just shut my classroom door and the politicians would leave me alone,” she said.

(Photo by Progress Ohio)

Teachers have long run for office, often with encouragement and support from their unions. This year, however, educators in states with some of the biggest labor disputes and most controversial education policies have been campaigning in record numbers. It’s one of the most direct ways that teachers and unions are showing their frustration over mounting attacks on tenure, the growth of nonunionized charter schools and efforts to evaluate teachers based on student test scores.

“You’re starting to see a lot of teachers say, ‘Enough is enough. I want to run for office,’ ” said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. The group works to elect Democrats committed to making dramatic changes to education policy, including many that the unions oppose such as eliminating tenure. Williams said he expects the trend of educators vying for office to continue. Official statistics aren’t kept on how many teachers are running, but anecdotal evidence from several states suggests the numbers are up.

The teachers union in Wisconsin, which was the center of a lengthy battle over collective bargaining last year, has six members competing for statewide office. In Tennessee, the first state to pass a law tying teacher evaluations to test scores, nine out of 11 teacher-candidates survived state legislature primaries to advance to the November elections. (Typically, two or three teachers in Tennessee run for any sort of office in a given year, according to the state’s teachers union). And in Minnesota, where mounting class sizes and debates over changing the seniority system have upset teachers, 35 educators are on the ballot. Members of the Minnesota teachers union, Education Minnesota, have estimated that that number is about a third higher than normal.

“Unfortunately for the past two years, the Legislature has ignored the real problems and focused on bashing teachers,” Education Minnesota president Tom Dooher said in a written statement. “We’re hopeful more people with classroom experience will be elected and re-order its priorities next year.”

Ohio was thrust into the national spotlight last year when its legislature passed Senate Bill 5, which banned unions from collective bargaining. A ballot initiative that November repealed the law, but the memory—and the anger it inspired—has not faded.

Although many potential candidates who attended the OEA’s training sessions decided not to run this year (and one lost in a primary), 10 remain on the ballot for state office—an unprecedented number, according to the OEA. In the last six years, just three other OEA members have run. This year, an 11th educator, a former member of the Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT) in his first year of retirement, is also running.

The Republicans have a stronghold in both houses of the Ohio State Assembly. In the House of Representatives, they are one member away from a super-majority, which would mean that any law passed as an “emergency measure” would take effect right away.

State congressional districts were redrawn in Ohio this year, in what supporters of the teachers union claim was gerrymandering meant to help Republican candidates. Still, the changes created new seats for some teachers to run and prompted others to challenge incumbents. Many teachers are now locked in tight races in districts that lean heavily red.

O’Connor, the special-education teacher, lost her current representative, Democrat John Carney, to another district during the redistricting process. Faced with an incumbent who had voted against collective bargaining and for a budget that cut state education funding by more than 10 percent, O’Connor decided it was time for her to get directly involved. She described the bill that outlawed collective bargaining as the “icing on the cake” in motivating her to run.

Tom Schmida, an OFT retiree up for election to the House in the Akron suburbs, was also spurred to run by a host of issues. A Democrat, Schmida is concerned about the future of collective bargaining, charter school accountability and a provision in the approved budget bill that will tie teacher evaluations to test scores. “An overreaching agenda by the extreme elements of the Republican Party, especially in the State House, [goes] beyond Senate Bill 5,” he said.

Schmida is in a close race against incumbent Republican Rep. Kristina Roegner, a staunch proponent of charters, vouchers and the elimination of collective-bargaining rights. Schmida’s grassroots campaign has knocked on about 7,500 doors and made 9,000 phone calls. Many of his volunteers are teachers and union members themselves, he said.

Both of the state’s teachers unions have endorsed all of the teacher-candidates. The OEA has also sent out mailings to members about its teacher-candidates, organized phone banks and helped produce a campaign video. “We’ve supported them through every means we possibly can,” said OEA president Patricia Frost-Brooks.

OEA declined to give specifics on the amount of money it has spent to help teacher-candidates get elected.

To Williams, these steps are a logical extension of unions’ long-time political involvement. “Teachers unions all over the country have been pretty successful at keeping the pipeline for potential candidates for office filled with good candidates,” he said. “We’re starting to see the unions take their message up a notch. It’s not just about good candidates … [but] getting teachers to be recruited.”

Yet Williams worries that too many teachers in office might derail the current education reform agenda. “As we move into an area where there’s lots of debates about teacher-quality issues and teacher-tenure issues, [the unions] are going to want people who will shut that debate down,” he said. He believes having more educators in office will be helpful only if they offer perspectives from the trenches without sidetracking the reform conversation.

Several Ohio teacher-candidates say they’re open to discussion and compromise. They add that their larger goals—like a better system of funding education—need not be divisive. It’s more about ensuring a teacher voice, they say.

“In 2011, that really showed us what happens when we don’t elect officials that are pro-workers, pro-public education and pro-teacher,” O’Connor said in her OEA-produced campaign video, referring to Senate Bill 5. “Electing pro-public education candidates is most important this time around. I think the teachers that are running, we can help protect and improve public education from the inside out.”

This story also appeared on NBCNews.com on November 2, 2012.
  

0 Comments

January 28th, 2013

1/28/2013

0 Comments

 
CAN YOU IMAGINE A MEDIA THAT DOES NOT SPEAK TO ANY OF THE ISSUES BELOW?  THESE ARE FUNDAMENTAL DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS BEING DISMANTLED WITHOUT A WORD FROM MEDIA.

YOUR THIRD WAY CORPORATE POL IS ALLOWING THESE POLICIES TO TRUMP PUBLIC INTEREST!!  VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!

MY COMMENT TO BALTIMORE MEDIA OUTLETS:

Please write as to the goals of the developers rather than just the step by step so people can be informed and have time to organize to work in their own interests.

We know that the current pols are planning to privatize all of Maryland's public transportation.  We will be at the mercy of private corporations for all things involving transport and no public input.  Whether it is subsidized trips to DC by train or bus routes that take people to malls....Public transportation was the greatest democratic policy of last century and we do not want to see it defunded and privatized.  They just announced yet another private contractor taking a Veola route and they are moving to give the ICC to a private contractor controlling toll revenue.

We know that the current pols are working to privatize public education and the tying of charters to businesses with curricula that tracks children into vocations is straight from China ....it is auotcratic and it will expand from poor schools to all public schools.  We need to let people know that democratic education is all about teaching people to be citizens first and workers next!!!

We are heading into an election that has the same faces at the state level as we know Maryland is ranked #1 in the nation in fraud, corruptions, and lack of transparency.  Can you imagine a Governor Gansler for goodness sake?  Can you image yet another AG running that has never once decried the massive Wall Street and corporate fraud and has worked for years in Maryland as it is ranked #1 in all of the above?  We must start now to demand better people run for office and promote them!!!!

Thank you,

Cindy Walsh

____________________________________________________
Spain is having the most severe of austerity as all things public have been usurped pensions, health care, schooling, and even food....the unemployment and poverty is staggering.  They were hit by not only the subprime mortgage fraud but by Wall Street's sovereign debt fraud.  So, like Greece, targeted because they were social democracies, they now are preparing to fight back. 

The first thing you need is media that isn't captured by corporate interests.  Greece created their own media.

WE NEED TO FIGHT FOR DEMOCRATIC MEDIA OUTLETS THAT ARE BEING CONSOLIDATED INTO A CHINESE-STYLE PROPAGANDA MACHINE.

Spain's Rebellion Moves to Print Thursday, 24 January 2013 00:00 By Michael Levitin, Truthout | Report

The January launch issue of La Marea, Spain's new monthly magazine, with the lead story: "Laws at the Service of Capital." (Photo: Michael Levitin)Cooperatively owned by journalists and readers, Spain's radical new monthly magazine, La Marea, is committed to democratic regeneration and aims to reach people with sober language and militant ideas.

La Marea, Spain's radical new monthly magazine, operates out of a narrow, lime green office space in southeastern Madrid, in the working-class stronghold of Vallecas. There is a small foyer with a couch to receive visitors; some cramped desks with three second-hand computers bought at 70 Euros apiece; and a back room with a tiny kitchenette and one sprawling glass-and-mosaic table where the staff holds meetings. There is no charge for rent because La Marea's editors worked out a deal with the small Web business that agreed to share its space: They cover the monthly 100 euro electricity bill, and that is all.

Call it publishing on the cheap. And call it Spain's new experiment in print media for a society fed up with debt crisis, polarized and ineffective politicians and the increasing corruption of government by corporate power.

People say here that now, unlike a few years ago, family dinner discussions routinely center around financial and banking crimes, collusions between government leaders and big business, privatizations and cuts to public services like health care - not to mention the 25 percent jobless rate, a level unseen since the death of dictator Francisco Franco nearly four decades ago. Spain now reportedly has the third-highest poverty rate in the European Union, behind Bulgaria and Romania.

Financial crimes, illegal foreclosures, and cuts and privatizations to the country's social services have driven many middle-class and middle-aged Spaniards out into the streets demanding justice. (Photo: Michael Levitin)So it's in this context that a handful of journalists seized an opening. Building on the social and political momentum generated by Spain's 15M movement - known to many abroad as the Indignados, which began in May of 2011 and continues to campaign against bank bailouts, unlawful foreclosures and a raft of financial and political crimes - editor Daniel Ayllon says the publication is "one more piece in the process, where journalism professionals enter in this chain of social change."

"We're in an emergency here - education, pensions, they're cutting everything," he says. Yet, says fellow editor Thilo Schaefer, the strategy this time isn't to shout about injustice "like another loud, angry leftist voice" singing to an audience of activists, but to "prove and make the point with facts - to reach a broader public."

"If we want to change something, we have to direct it to everyone, not one sector. The big debate happening here is about politicians, how they need to fight back against the markets. But hey," says Schaefer, evoking a core argument made at Occupy Wall Street more than one year ago, "we're saying the markets are part of you and you are part of the markets - when former ministers are hired by huge energy and financial corporations, and when the public is left paying the bill for all the bankers who messed things up."

The Launch Issue

La Marea, which means The Tide, isn't actually a magazine, but it's not quite a newspaper either: It's a compact hybrid monthly, 64 pages long, on full-color tabloid-sized newsprint that is now being sold for three euros a pop at kiosks in the nation's three largest cities: Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. In bookstores and news shops elsewhere, from Valladolid to Huesca, and from Malaga to Seville, people are quickly snatching up the January launch issue, which totaled 25,000 copies and went on sale the Friday before Christmas. The February edition, Issue #2, is due out on January 25.

Daniel Ayllon (left), Berta del Rio (right) and editorial staff celebrated last month the arrival of La Marea's first printed edition at their office in Vallecas, Madrid. (Photo: Michael Levitin)In its editorial principles, La Marea states its commitment to "the defense of the public, of equality and secularism; of economic justice, historic memory, dignified work, the environment, the right to housing and free culture ... also to social movements and democratic regeneration." The inaugural issue features a bold, mustard-yellow cover with a drawing of a politician, a banker and a white-robed priest passing on stilts above a crowd of people, and headlined, "Laws at the Service of Capital: The Collusion Between Governments, Banks and Big Business Translates into Standards that Harm Society." The lead story explores the revolving door between big business and politicians, singling out members of both the ruling Popular Party and the opposition Socialist Party for explicit ties to the highest corporate levels in the banking, energy, telecommunications and other industries, and sets a clear tone for the issue.

Divided into two halves - the "blue" half features hard news analyses, reports, info-graphs and investigative features, while the "pink" half examines issues through a more cultural lens. The debut issue of La Marea includes stories about hiring irregularities, favoritism and nepotism at the Cervantes Institute, Spain's leading foreign cultural institution; the privatization of Spain's water supply by three corporations; curbs on civil liberties in the EU through increased drone use and other spy technology; and citizen efforts to craft a new Spanish Constitution.

There are stories from correspondents abroad like the one from Quito, about Ecuadorians who have returned home from Spain due to the foreclosure crisis; from Athens, about Greeks' new financial and community strategies to cope with the crisis; and from Belgium, about the closure of a Ford auto plant that cost 10,000 jobs. Spanish economist Antonio Banos offers an opinion piece entitled "2013: Year of the Acceleration" that predicts an expanded debt crisis and stronger public resistance to austerity. There are reviews of films, theater, music and books (David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a hot read in Spanish, as is Joseph Stiglitz's The Price of Inequality). One section of La Marea, called "Rompeolas" (Breaking Waves), highlights cooperatives and projects of communities building a new economic future.

Can a Cooperative Challenge the Media Establishment?

The debt crisis and years of recession have hit Spanish media hard: Some 70 news outlets have closed in the last four years and a reported 9,000 journalists are currently without work. The founders of La Marea also found themselves out of work when Publico, the left-leaning newspaper they worked for, folded in bankruptcy last February. After an unsuccessful attempt by employees to buy back the paper, Schaefer, then its deputy foreign editor, and Magda Bandera, its culture editor, helped raise 33,000 euros through the crowd-sourcing site verkami.com (Spain's equivalent of kickstarter.com). They launched Mas Publico, a 32-page paper that hit Spain's streets during the May 15 movement's one-year anniversary last spring.

But the activist tone wasn't what they wanted. Another left-oriented newspaper published in Madrid, called Diagonal, already served that purpose. La Marea's seven editors, who range in age from their mid-20s to mid-40s, all came from experience working in mainstream media. They wanted to give a more savvy, professional expression to the social movement whose militancy had galvanized the country - and had served as the forerunner of Occupy Wall Street, which followed four months later - but whose message and popularity, much like the US movement's, faced steep decline. "We don't have to tell people how to think; we don't have to manipulate," says Bandera

"We just put the data out there. The reality is very clear. With sober language and militant ideas, we can reach people."

Getting the publication off the ground - and then, making it profitable - poses a unique challenge to La Marea because of its strict adherence to an ethics code, which bars it from accepting advertising by banks, corporations or businesses with any record of foul play, financial, political or otherwise.

But what's most unique about La Marea's bid to crack the mainstream - tempting readers away from El Pais, La Vanguardia and the other corporate-backed party-supported giants of Spanish media - is its far-sighted social structure and business model: a 100 percent worker-owned cooperative.

Collectively owned by its seven founding editors and dozens of socios, or members, who support it financially, La Marea operates on a non-hierarchical basis without any boss or chief editor. All decisions are made collectively by the editorial team through an assembly process. Once the paper begins to turn a profit, it will put to a vote with its reader-shareholders whether to distribute the dividends or to reinvest the money back into the company. The supporting members, says Schaefer, "really feel that it is theirs."

"It's a collective effort," says editor Ayllon, "a co-op of workers and readers where the readers directly support the effort and take a stake in the paper." Ironically, perhaps, it made the most business sense to found La Marea as a print publication, rather than as a web site. "It's for practical reasons: [Print] is an income source," says Ayllon, who worked formerly as a freelance correspondent for Spanish media in New York.

"It's really not a noble 'print project,' or something romantic. As a weekly we can be profitable. People in Spain buy papers on the weekends. We believe that deep, real reflective analyses and investigations on paper have a future."

With some 23,000 followers on Twitter and 100,000 unique monthly visitors to www.lamarea.com - which receives a quarter of a million total page views a month - the magazine's online presence plays the complementary role of helping diversify readership, build the brand, and increase subscriptions and a membership base. A tablet version of the magazine is coming soon.

But print is paramount. And in this sense La Marea poses a two-fold experiment: one, to engage Spanish readers not with entertainment and partisan political chatter, but with serious, truthful analyses that disrobe the corporate-government alliance which is profiting by selling off the country's public services like health care, education and the rest. And two, to prove that a cooperative funding structure can survive, and sustain itself, in the realm of high-level independent journalism. "We're selling two things: information and the cooperative model," says editor Bandera.

The author of nonfiction books about the Balkans and Iraq, as well as a book of short stories, Bandera, 42, brings a powerful personal story to her role in co-founding La Marea: Just over one year ago she underwent treatment for breast cancer. "If you survive something, it is to live - to feel you put your energy into things you believe in. That is to be alive," she says.

"We had to coordinate, cooperate, collaborate. I dreamed we could do this."

A younger writer and editor on the staff, 25-year-old Berta del Rio, with bright blue eyes and an emphatic voice, echoes the purpose they have undertaken, and why it is important that it succeed. "I'm a journalist because I believe in change, in optimism - because a press that unites people behind a theme is possible. And it's the moment to build it," she says. "It seems incredible that a small group can produce media - as though it's something only for big business. But we see that we can, that we can swim against the current, can open eyes and reveal a space of freedom. We're debating ideas, not ideology. Both parties failed and our press serves to reflect on that [failure] and present new alternatives, to learn from history. It's the way to fight against established power" in the way that previous generations did under Franco, she adds.

She then switches to English and concludes with the words one hears uttered more and more often these days, in Spain and elsewhere:

"Yes we can!"



__________________________________________________
DON'T YOU THINK THAT HAVING AN ULTIMATE GOAL OF CREATING MEDICI-STYLE CITY STATES RUN BY CORPORATE RULING FAMILIES WOULD BE A GOAL WORTH DISCUSSING IN MEDIA?  WOULDN'T YOU WANT TO SHOUT OUT AGAINST A MOVE TO TAKE AMERICA BACK TO THE MIDDLE-AGES?

HERE IN BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND THIS INSTITUTION IS JOHNS HOPKINS AND IF IT ISN'T ALL OF THE LAND THEY OWN WITH NO TAXES PAID, OR THE PUBLIC POLICY NGOs THAT CONTROL ALL POLICY IN THE CITY, OR THE TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TAXES SENT TO HOPKINS TO ADMINISTER ALL PUBLIC PROJECTS.....

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!

McKinsey: Cities as Economic Units Rather than Countries
January 25th, 2013
in econ_news, syndication

Send feedback »

Written by Jillian Friesen, GEI Associate

Econintersect: The most recent edition of McKinsey Quarterly: Chart Focus Newsletter centered on the topic of emerging markets and how recent shifts in nation to city economic power is affecting multinational firms. Companies are now focusing on obtaining increased economies of scale by catering their business strategies to look at city-centric regions rather than countries. The major metropolitan areas of the future will prove to be vital aspects of the global economy, far over shadowing many nations in the McKinsey view.

Follow up:

In 2010, emerging economies made up 39% of the world's GDP.  By 2025, this number is predicted to be over 70%.  The need to adapt business models and strategies in order to gain a competitive edge over local industry is proving to be an urgent task. Click on graphic for larger image.

According to McKinsey Quarterly, which has put countless amount of research and effort into better understanding of established as well as Western start-ups, one cannot ignore cities in development processes. The solution to competing with the rising competitiveness of cities along side nations does not entail a quick fix strategy. In the words of the editors at McKinsey,

"We wish there were a secret formula or key capability that could easily transform a company’s emerging-market efforts. In fact, our experience suggests the challenge in emerging markets more closely resembles a decathlon, where success comes from all-around excellence across multiple sports." In its newsletter McKinsey Quarterly suggested multinationals should revamp their strategies by grouping large cities with similar traits together to form a "supercluster". This is only a part of the "decathlon," but it is vital. In this way, businesses will have the benefit of functioning as a "unified hub". When the need for more development arises, the cities would have a planned development process of branching off into separate clusters.

In a recent paper co-authored by Dirk Ehnts, titled, "From New Trade Theory to New Economic Geography: A Space Odyssey", Dirk Ehnts cited a quote from "Cosmos", written by Carl Sagan:

"Most of the world's great cities have grown haphazardly, little by little, in response to the needs of the moment; very rarely is a city planned for the remote future. The evolution of a city is like the evolution of the brain: it develops from a small center and slowly grows and changes, leaving many old parts still functioning. There is no way to rip out the ancient interior of the brain because of its imperfections and replace it with something of more modern manufacture. The brain must function during the renovation. That is why our brain stem is surrounded by the R complex, then the limbic system and finally the cerebral cortex. The old parts are in charge of too many fundamental functions for them to be replaced altogether. So they wheeze along, out-of-date and sometimes counterproductive, but a necessary consequence of our evolution." Ehnts brought up the need to take a closer look at the core-periphery economic model as well as others resembling it.


This blueprint for creating future competitiveness comes especially useful in this day and age when demographics stresses are spreading, as well as in lands where multiple languages and cultures live side by side. China, for example, has around 56 varied ethnic groups with hundreds of different dialects. Major metropolitan centers which lie within hours of each other and can sometimes differ in both language and culture.

In Africa alone there are almost 2,000 different recognized languages and dialects.

There is also the obvious situations of talent moving to cities with specific related industries. Implementing a strategy which encompasses an entire nation while completely ignoring the finer details of the country's diverse culture and industries disregards reality. There are cities which are already more powerful than many nations.  The following example from the McKinsey report compares city regions in China with countries in Europe.


Many think the focus should be on emerging cities should be on how to properly develop them, not how corporations can gain competitive edges. Done correctly, a properly planned out city and surrounding sprawl could aid in the development of the city, its citizens as well as the nation as a whole. This in turn would create greater GDP and help companies that are invested within the nation. Paul Romer, an activist who supports the implementation of charter cities or, as he calls it, "special reform zones", sees these planned-out cities as a way to bring about "peace and prosperity" to emerging cities and countries.


Paul Romer speaking on the idea of charter cities. (Click below)





Many are critical of this idea however and feel it may jeopardize the ability of individuals or enterprises to live up to their full potential. Dirk Ehnts is one of these who disagree with the notion of planned and developed cities: 

"Society is complex, and building a Manhattan in a developing country won’t work. Take a closer look at Dubai and Singapore, and you will understand that not all is well." Whatever the case may be one thing is for certain, the world is changing. People and companies alike will have to keep on adapting and changing with the times or be left behind. The question of whether or not to plan out cities or have companies acclimate to the morphing demographic landscape remains to be solved.


______________________________________________________

FREE MEDIA IS THE KEY TO DEMOCRACY.  IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ONE SOURCE THAT IS FREE, FAIR, AND BALANCED BUT RATHER A BUNCH OF PUNDITS REPEATING WHAT THE POLS SAY......YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DEMOCRACY!!!

SHOUT OUT TO THE FCC AND YOUR THIRD WAY POL!!!!

In December, you helped put the brakes on the Federal Communications Commission’s rush to allow more media consolidation. Together we turned the tables on the FCC, mobilizing more than 60 members of Congress to oppose the agency’s plan and delivering more than 200,000 petition signatures in opposition.

But FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski still wants to forge ahead — and refuses to come clean about his timeline or plans. Tell Chairman Genachowski you won’t stand for this.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch has been on a spending spree. He just confirmed to journalists at the L.A. Times that he wants to buy their paper. His lobbyists have kept the pressure on Chairman Genachowski, who remains poised to push through a rule change that would allow Murdoch to expand his media empire. Tell Murdoch and the FCC you won’t stand for this.

All the pieces are coming together for Murdoch. The Tribune Company, which owns both the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune, just emerged from bankruptcy and is eager to sell off its papers for some quick cash. And Murdoch has been on the hunt for new properties, gobbling up new cable channels and more.

Murdoch is hoping we’ll stop fighting. The FCC is hoping we’ll stop fighting. But I’m betting that you won’t stop fighting. Help us raise the volume and let the FCC know that you won’t stand for more media consolidation.

Media consolidation is good for Murdoch — but bad for diversity.

Thanks to your support, we completed additional analysis of media consolidation’s impact on women and people of color in the media. It’s not a pretty picture. Today there are only five African American-owned full-power TV stations, representing a 74 percent decline in just six years. Women own less than 7 percent of all radio and television stations. Tell the FCC that you won’t stand for it. We need a media that truly represents our country’s diversity.

The media consistently push damaging stereotypes and butcher coverage of issues critical to women and people of color. The FCC is required to foster diversity in our media — but the agency has been so negligent in its duty that we sued it and won. A federal court ordered the FCC to address the issue before allowing more media consolidation. But the FCC hasn’t listened, and the rules it’s trying to push through would make things that much worse.

We’ve created some amazing momentum in this campaign, but we can’t stop now. Help us build buzz for better media today.

0 Comments

January 24th, 2013

1/24/2013

0 Comments

 

  UNEMPLOYED?  IF YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS ARE NOT RUNNING LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES AGAINST THESE CORPORATE POLS.......THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!!!!!




The gentleman from New Jersey who was the contractor losing the bid for the telecom job after having bid 1/2 of what the company given the bid did talked with me afterwards and gave me his card as I work to investigate this deal further.  He was incredulous that anyone could lose a bid like that and told me that NEVER happened in New Jersey.  He could not believe the level of corruption in the Baltimore system.  Keep in mind that New Jersey was once the most corrupt in the nation.....Maryland now has that spot.....and was forced by Federal justice department to reform a decade ago.  The Center for Public Integrity's State Corruption Study identified New Jersey as having a model government system of reforms in cleaning up crime and corruption.  It didn't say New Jersey was the cleanest.....it said that it had all of the systems in place to move it in that direction and this New Jersey contractor was telling me it works in New Jersey.

WE ARE DEMANDING THAT MARYLAND IMPLEMENT THE SAME TYPES OF CORRUPTION REFORMS AS NEW JERSEY AND STOP DENYING THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH CRIME AND CORRUPTION IN MARYLAND!!!!!

We know this is no where near happening now as I attend yet another Baltimore City Council labor meeting that same evening and have to confront yet another government scam of the people.....it is never ending.  Again I am looking at Curran who as usual is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. This meeting is about the casino jobs coming to Baltimore and just to refresh memories, Mayor Rawlings-Blake and Governor Martin O'Malley recruited their standard coalition of labor and justice organizations to promote his agenda of gambling and as usual labor and justice were screwed as per this meeting.  Now, I spent all last year telling these labor and justice organizations they were being used and would not get jobs, but they tried one more time to believe in their leaders and backed the issue, even as gambling hurts these same people.  THIS IS ORWELLIAN!!!

I enter the room for the labor meeting early and heard Curran saying out of one side of his mouth to the casino people 'you have to give some union work on this casino site.....only the construction laborers for instance.....don't worry about those inside'.  Then, as the room filled with black, underserved union labor ready for work guaranteed them, Curran speaks out of the other side of his mouth in saying 'As head of Baltimore's labor committee I'm a strong supporter of unions'!  Remember, I have said that Baltimore has the most repressive labor environment for the working class in the nation and this committee is the driver of that.  So we listened to the casino owner and all of the Mayor's staff talking about what needs to be done to get ready for the casino opening in about a year and there are all kinds of repeated words of '1,800 jobs for the Baltimore area and strong, good-paying work' just as we heard in those casino referendum commercials.....ONLY NONE OF IT IS TRUE.....THEY WERE ALL LYING RIGHT TO OUR FACES ........ AGAIN.  I THINK THEY WILL FIND THAT THIS WILL BE THE STRAW THAT BREAKS THE CAMEL'S BACK AS FAR AS LABOR AND JUSTICE  BELIEVING THESE POLS.

Rawlings-Blake's staff then went on to talk of needing to build all kinds of job training programs for these jobs....making these same non-profits/private parnerships to ready the future casino workers.....community colleges as the focal points for training.  They talked about Obama's Federal job training money and the need for local taxpayer money to meet these goals.  THERE WAS UNLIMITED REFERENCE TO MAKING ALL THIS AVAILABLE TO THE BLACK AND WORKING CLASS IN BALTIMORE WHO HAVE OUTRAGEOUS UNEMPLOYMENT STATS. 

THEN THE PIGS STARTED TO FLY.....THE PIGS STARTED TO ACCUMULATE SLOWLY AND BY THE END OF THE COUNCIL MEMBERS 'QUESTIONING PERIOD' THOSE PIGS FLYING FILLED THE ROOM.

Helen Holton who always speaks out about how bad a policy is after it has happened played her usual role in not knowing that a contractor job fair had happened and it did not include any black/minority contractors.......because they did not know of the job fair.  Holton and other council members  pretended not to have known themselves....we see this all the time.  I reminded Holton when my time came to speak that this contractor meeting was on all media outlets as they all made clear there were no minority contractors present.  The problem as is normal is that it hit the airwaves after the event so no publicity would happen and only the connected would sign up and register.  THESE CITY COUNCIL PEOPLE WERE LEFT IN THE DARK THEY SAID AS THE FIRST PHASE OF JOB DEVELOPMENT LEAVES OUT THE SAME LABOR AND JUSTICE PEOPLE WHO WERE SOLD ON THE JOB CREATION!

THESE POLS ARE ANIMALS!!!!!!

To wind up this situation I spoke to all of the hypocrisy by saying this "  I spoke to the AFL-CIO and the SEIU in early December as they were happy over winning the casino referendum and thinking of the jobs.  Both unions told me that they SHOOK HANDS AND WERE ASSURED BY BOTH CASINOS.....MGM AND CAESARS IN BALTIMORE THAT THEY EMBRACED CASINO UNIONS AND THESE CASINOS WOULD BE UNION CASINOS.  GOVERNOR O'MALLEY AND MAYOR RAWLINGS-BLAKE ACTIVELY SOUGHT AND TOLD UNIONS THEY WOULD GET THE JOBS AND THESE JOBS WOULD BE GOOD JOBS AND WOULD HIRE LOCALLY.

What I was hearing at this meeting was the opposite of all of this.  The Mayor's office deliberately left out minority contractors from the start.....they were obviously planning to move ahead without union participation and contrary to what your city council member says......they knew this...... and we already hear in there voice that none of the policy needed to circumvent criminal background issues for many Baltimore workers has even been discussed.  SO THEY DO NOT INTENT TO HIRE THE VERY GROUPS THEY HAD LEADING THIS FIGHT FOR THE CASINOS.  I made very public that all across the nation I am seeing these casinos leaving Vegas and going to states bringing the high-paying jobs and staffing with them.....not hiring locally and the are hiring part-time, not full-time leaving people with poverty jobs.  WE KNOW THAT IS THE INTENTION AND WE ARE SAYING WE WILL NOT HAVE THIS!!!!

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!

This is of course happening all across the nation and people are wakening to the fact that these Third Way corporate pols are working for corporate and wealth at the expense of labor and justice.

UNEMPLOYED?  IF YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS ARE NOT RUNNING LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES AGAINST THESE CORPORATE POLS.......THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!!!!!

___________________________________________________

Baltimore residents hear casino jobs plan; Some skeptical Some residents angry that casino exec.'s left before public commenting

Published  8:25 AM EST Jan 24, 2013 WBAL TV



The local hiring plan was presented as part of a City Council public hearing on the issue.

"What I realize is that the American dream, for the last four years, I haven't been having," said city resident James Commander.


Commander is one of thousands hoping to land a job at the new Caesars casino complex that plans to open in 2014 on a parcel of land in the shadow of M&T Bank Stadium.


"We need these jobs. We want these jobs," Commander said.


At the hearing, the mayor's office revealed details of a memorandum of understanding between the city and Caesars that promises to give priority to qualified city residents to help fill close to 1,800 jobs at the Horseshoe Casino.


"It is really our job to make sure that we do everything possible to do a very, very broad outreach for a community hiring effort," said Karen Sitnick of the mayor's Office of Employment Development.


"I need people that know the city. I need people that are passionate about the city -- that can answer questions about the city. You don't get that if you're not from the city," said Caesars spokesman Chad Barnhill.


But later at the hearing, a group of community leaders and local labor union members cornered the Caesar executives in the hallway. They were upset that the executives left the hearing just as the public comment period began.


"If you're not concerned enough to stay around and hear their concerns, it doesn't lend well to the idea that you're trying to give back to the city," said community organizer Richie Armstrong.


The union members said the early exit reinforced their distrust of the hiring memorandum of understanding between the city and Caesars.

"It doesn't hold anybody accountable, because you can say, 'I tried to reach the goal but somehow we failed.' That still leaves the residents out in the cold," Armstrong said.


As part of the memorandum of understanding, Caesars has agreed to submit workforce reports to the city twice a year to show how many of its workers live in Baltimore. 
___________________________________________________

THIS WAS THE PROPAGANDA PUBLISHED IN MEDIA AND SOLD BY MAYOR RAWLINGS-BLAKE AND CITY COUNCIL......WE KNOW NONE OF THIS IS EXPECTED TO HAPPEN.

SEE WHY RAWLINGS-BLAKE IS MOVING TO A NEW AND HIGHER POSITION IN THE PARTY?  SHE AND O'MALLEY HAVE HANDED MARYLAND AND ITS CITIZENS OVER TO THE 1% BETTER THAN ANY OTHER!!!!!!

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!

Baltimore to vote on deal to boost local hiring at Caesars casinoLas Vegas company agrees to make outreach, training efforts in Baltimore
Stephen Martino, State Lottery Agency, left, has a word with… (Kim Hairston, Baltimore…)December 18, 2012|By Scott Dance, The Baltimore Sun


City officials are expected to sign off Wednesday on a deal that promises to help residents seeking the 1,700 jobs planned for Horseshoe Casino Baltimore — addressing one of the main arguments made by gambling supporters in the debate over expanding casinos in Maryland.

A Caesars Entertainment subsidiary has agreed to fund a temporary employee in the mayor's employment development office to lead hiring efforts in Baltimore, to print informational materials targeting potential employees in the city, and to report twice a year to city officials on hiring progress toward its workforce development plan.

"The agreement will go a long way to ensure that city residents are prioritized and have the first chance to seize these new job opportunities at a time when people need it most," said Ryan O'Doherty, a spokesman for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

City workforce advocates welcomed the move but said efforts with previous projects show it will take persistence to ensure that residents learn of the opportunities and have access to specialized training needed for many jobs. Extensive background checks could also pose a challenge to getting some residents hired, a city councilwoman acknowledged.

Caesars officials said local hiring is always a priority when building in a new community.

"Working within the local community is always going to make the most sense," said Jan Jones Blackhurst, an executive vice president for Las Vegas-based Caesars. "If you want to be an integral part of the community, local hiring is your first step."

Casino jobs were the focus of many campaign commercials during the run-up to the November referendum, when Maryland voters approved Question 7 to allow table games and a sixth casino in the state. Proponents, including Rawlings-Blake, urged votes in favor the measure for the tax revenue and jobs it could create.

"Question 7 means thousands of jobs and millions for our schools," she said in one ad, with former Ravens offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden towering behind her.

The agreement with Caesars helps ensure that those jobs benefit city residents, said Councilwoman Rochelle "Rikki" Spector. State law encourages casino operators to hire within a 10-mile radius of the facilities, but city officials are seeking to narrow that scope to provide opportunities for thousands of unemployed residents who live near enough to the casino's Russell Street site that they could commute by public transit.

"That's not good enough for Baltimore City," Spector said of the state policy. "These are new kinds of jobs for us."

Spector plans to gather representatives from the mayor's employment office, the casino, unions and other stakeholders at a televised public hearing Jan. 23, when more details of hiring and training needs will be discussed.

The agreement requires the mayor's employment office to develop "talent scout reports" to find and market qualified residents to Caesars and its subcontractors. Jobs are expected to include construction, initially, but then positions on the casino floor, in restaurants and other parts of the facility.

Given the specialized nature of many jobs, city officials are emphasizing the need for training. Caesars is also being required to, if possible, establish employee mentoring programs.

"Of course we won't find table game operators in the general public," said Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke. "We can be a city with lots of them, as soon as you train us."

But there will also be hurdles, Spector acknowledged.

Those offered jobs working at a casino in Maryland must fill out a 14-page gaming employee license form, which is reviewed by staff from the state lottery and gaming commission. Applicants must indicate if they've been charged with a crime, but also must reveal if they've been the subject of a criminal complaint or an investigation by any government agency or organization.

Those filling out the form must also disclose if they or any business they worked for has filed for bankruptcy.

The Maryland State Lottery Commission warns applicants that it "will make inquiries to establish whether the identified individuals have had any involvement with law enforcement agencies" and says failure to disclose past incidents will "be take into account in assessing the applicant's character, honesty, and integrity."

A spokesperson for the commission said staffers spend about 40 hours completing a background check for executive-level employees, and 20 hours for table game dealers and others who work directly with gamblers. Sixteen new employees will be hired to deal with the license applications.

The outreach needed to find potential applicants will also be a challenge, said some who have experience in workforce development on city projects. Caesars has agreed to pay up to $80,000 to employ a community recruitment coordinator in the mayor's employment office for a yearlong period around the opening of the casino, which is expected in 2014.
_________________________________________________

HERE YOU SEE LOCAL UNIONS FIGHTING FOR THIS GAMBLING ISSUE BECAUSE THEY ARE TOLD THEY WOULD HAVE LOTS OF JOBS AND THAT THE CASINOS WOULD BE UNIONIZED INSIDE AND OUT.  THIS GAMBLING ISSUE WOULD NOT HAVE PASSED IF THE LABOR UNIONS DID NOT MOBILIZE......THESE SAME POLS......O'MALLEY AND ALL OF MARYLAND'S INCUMBENTS USE LABOR TIME AND AGAIN FOR ISSUES AND THEN NEVER USE THEM.

VOTE ALL THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS OUT OF OFFICE!!!!

Local: Maryland Unions slam Md. leaders for gambling-expansion debacle

June 25, 2012 | 3:53 pm | Modified: June 25, 2012 at 3:55 pm

  Ben Giles Staff Writer - Crime Beat The Washington Examiner


A local union leader accused Maryland lawmakers Monday of "playing games" with people's lives by derailing a deal to expand gambling in the state, a move that could add nearly 4,000 jobs in Prince George's County.

Maryland lawmakers have struggled through a debate over gambling that could lead to a sixth state casino in Prince George's County and the authorization of table games such as blackjack and roulette at all state casino sites.

However, voters in a statewide referendum also must approve any expansion of gambling, and four out of five Marylanders want to the opportunity in November to make the choice themselves, according to a new poll conducted on behalf of the Building Trades for the National Harbor, site of a proposed $800 million casino.

And 53 percent of voters think there's room for improvement in Maryland's slots program, which some have criticized as uncompetitive compared with other local states', the poll by Annapolis firm OpinionWorks found.

Ten percent of those polled think the state's gambling program is the best that it can be.

Not allowing voters to have a say on measures that would bring thousands of construction jobs to Prince George's and increase tax revenues for the state would be a shame, said Vance Ayres, executive secretary-treasurer of the Washington D.C. Building Trades Council.

"You're putting people's careers on the backburner," Ayres said. "You've got people here [in Annapolis] bickering about things they shouldn't even be bickering about."

Ayres joined leaders from the SEIU and AFSCME labor unions to deliver a letter to Gov. Martin O'Malley, House Speaker Michael Busch, D-Anne Arundel, and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., D-Calvert and Prince George's, asking for a speedy resolution to the gambling debate.

The Building Trades for the National Harbor has begun running a television ad to go with its radio campaign supporting gambling expansion.

bgiles@washingtonexaminer.com




_________________________________________________
I just read a mainstream media write-up on Geithner that praised him for his work in Treasury as did Obama.  Geithner was the equivalent of the mob's handlers in what was the largest looting of government coffers and citizens in history.  You see how the mainstream news are trying to paint a revisionist history even as journalism all around them provide evidence and real investigative analysis.......THIS IS CAPTURED STATE MEDIA JUST AS EXISTS IN CHINA AND WE SHOULD BE OUT IN THE STREETS IN THE MILLIONS OVER THIS!!!!!!!

GET OUT AND PROTEST AND VOTE THESE CRIMINALS OUT OF OFFICE!!!!! 


Economy   The Guardian / By Glenn Greenwald

Obama's Failure to Punish Banks Should Be Causing Serious Social Unrest

A new PBS Frontline report examines outrageous steps Obama's administration took to protect Wall St. Wall Street from prosecutions. January 23, 2013  |

PBS' Frontline program on Tuesday night broadcast a  new one-hour report on one of the greatest and most shameful failings of the  Obama administration: the lack of even a single arrest or prosecution of any senior Wall Street banker for the systemic fraud that precipitated the 2008  financial crisis: a crisis from which millions of people around the world are still suffering. What this program particularly demonstrated was that the Obama justice department, in particular the Chief of its Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer, never even tried to hold the high-level criminals accountable.

What Obama justice officials did instead is exactly what they did in the face of high-level Bush era crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping: namely, acted to protect the most powerful factions in the society in the face of overwhelming evidence of serious criminality. Indeed, financial elites were not only vested with impunity for their fraud, but thrived as a result of it, even as ordinary Americans  continue to suffer the effects of that crisis.

Worst of all, Obama justice officials both shielded and feted these Wall Street oligarchs (who, just by the way,  overwhelmingly supported Obama's 2008 presidential campaign) as they simultaneously prosecuted and imprisoned powerless Americans for far more trivial transgressions. As Harvard law professor Larry Lessig  put it two weeks ago when expressing anger over the DOJ's persecution of Aaron Swartz: "we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House." (Indeed, as "The Untouchables" put it: while no senior Wall Street executives have been prosecuted, "many small mortgage brokers, loan appraisers and even home buyers" have been).

As I documented at length in my 2011 book on America's two-tiered justice system, With Liberty and Justice for Some, the evidence that felonies were committed by Wall Street is overwhelming. That evidence directly negates the primary excuse by Breuer (previously offered by Obama himself) that the bad acts of Wall Street were not criminal.

Numerous documents prove that executives at leading banks, credit agencies, and mortgage brokers were falsely touting assets as sound that knew were junk: the very definition of fraud. As former Wall Street analyst Yves Smith wrote in her book ECONned: "What went on at Lehman and AIG, as well as the chicanery in the CDO [collateralized debt obligation] business, by any sensible standard is criminal." Even lifelong Wall Street defender Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chair,  said in Congressional testimony that "a lot of that stuff was just plain fraud."

A New York Times editorial in August explained that the DOJ's excuse for failing to prosecute Wall Street executives - that it was too hard to obtain convictions - "has always defied common sense - and all the more so now that a fuller picture is emerging of the range of banks' reckless and lawless activities, including interest-rate rigging, money laundering, securities fraud and excessive speculation." The Frontline program interviewed former prosecutors, Senate staffers and regulators who unequivocally said the same: it is inconceivable that the DOJ could not have successfully prosecuted at least some high-level Wall Street executives - had they tried.

What's most remarkable about all of this is not even Wall Street had the audacity to expect the generosity of largesse they ended up receiving. "The Untouchables" begins by recounting the massive financial devastation the 2008 crisis wrought - "the economy was in ruins and bankers were being blamed" - and recounts:

"In 2009, Wall Street bankers were on the defensive, worried they could be held criminally liable for fraud. With a new administration, bankers and their attorneys expected investigations and at least some prosecutions."

0 Comments

January 23rd, 2013

1/23/2013

0 Comments

 
PAY-TO-PLAY IS SO OBVIOUS AND OPEN IN MARYLAND THAT NEWS AGENCIES AND WATCHDOGS HAVE AN INDUSTRY OF SIMPLY REPORTING THIS CORRUPTION.  YOU'LL MEET THE BALTIMORE CITY COUNCIL LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT PERSON BELOW.  THIS IS WHO HAS TO HAVE 3 MONKEY SYNDROME IN ORDER TO TOTALLY DISREGARD THE CORRUPTION!!

SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, AND SPEAK NO EVIL!!!  Semper Fidelis.

This will be one of my Baltimore City Board of Estimates blogs and as always it is disgusting.  I want to highlight two things this week as simply the worst of the worst. 

$908,666.67 allowed for funding what is called the interim of September 14, 2012-2013 where the city pays a private company to manage waste-water from Sparrow's Mill Steel mill (now closed).  $80,000 per month is paid by taxpayers for this company to accept, manage, and discharge the steel mill's effluent water processed through the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant.  The mill is in bankruptcy and was allowed to somehow fail to pay for city water to the tune of millions of dollars.  Now we are finding that the City has been paying for the neutralization of contaminated water from the steel-making process.

I am a novice with the information so I am speaking off the cuff, but I do not see how this can be interpreted any other way.  The public was paying to clean contaminated water for industry.  This is just like an manufacturing company who closes down and leaves all of the toxic waste for the taxpayers to clean.  That is also an issue with the mill.....contaminated soils and wetlands around the plant for which no money was set aside in the bankruptcy.  The executives all received bonuses which some are saying came from the worker's pensions and the courts ruled that OK.

So, it looks to me that taxpayers pay a minimum of $1 million and it is no doubt more, to maximize profits for this company and we are going to do it even after bankruptcy.  It is the city who will be looking as to how to get rid of effluent left behind as the mill closed.  I AM NOT GOING TO GO INTO THE SPECIFICS OF THE FACT THAT THE MILL WAS OPENED AS A PAY-TO-PLAY THAT MOVED WATERFRONT PROPERTY INTO THE HANDS OF AN INVESTMENT FIRM FROM CHICAGO (THINK OBAMA) WITH A DEAL THAT INCLUDED ALL KINDS OF TAX BREAKS AND NO REQUIREMENT TO UPGRADE  THE MILL SO AS TO MAKE IT COMPETITIVE, BECAUSE THE POINT WAS, ALL ALONG, NOT TO KEEP IT OPEN.  THIS IS AN O'MALLEY PAY-TO-PLAY THAT MADE THE INVESTORS HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS AND MAYBE BILLIONS IF THE LAND CLEANS UP ENOUGH TO DEVELOP IT.

As always with corporate pols.....the public pays the costs of operations and infrastructure and the corporation gets the profit.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!!

The company below was awarded the bid for the same phone system setup that sent the Comptroller to court over what is basically bid-rigging.  A New Jersey company having all of the requirements needed for this job and that bid 1/2 of what these companies below did lost the award to a technicality...they forgot a form that stated a requirement.  It was clear the same information was sworn to at other points in the bid process so the issue wasn't the requirement, it was a form.  The bid difference is about $160,000.  IT WAS CLEAR THE BID SHOULD HAVE GONE TO THE LOWER BIDDER, BUT EXCUSES WERE USED TO MAKE SURE THE COMPANIES BELOW GOT THE BID FOR ALMOST TWICE THE AMOUNT.

We had to listen to the Mayor's lawyer, Nilson, tell us 'we must follow rules.....and he forgot the form'.  Now, this is the same lawyer who listens to Joliet, the minority contractor lawyer lambast the Board for failing over and again to follow the rules......they are always finding exceptions.  THE INCONSISTENCY AND ARBITRARINESS MAKES A CITIZEN SICK.  So, this was not a case of minority contractor getting work, it was not about the best value for the people, it is about who gets the work.  Make no mistake......these companies below will subcontract to subcontractors so labor and local business are not the issues either.

IF YOU LOOK AT THIS BID AND YOU CONSIDER THE ONE BELOW THAT WITH THE COMPTROLLER PRATT VoIP BID WE ARE LOSING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ......AND IT HAPPENS OVER AND OVER.

WHEN IT IS CONVENIENT THE RULES MUST BE FOLLOWED AND WHEN IT IS NOT CONVENIENT THE RULES MAY BE TWEAKED.  SOUND THE SAME AS HOW RULE OF LAW IS NOW APPLIED?  YOU BETCHA!!!


Experienced management driven by new technology iCore, like many technology companies, was driven by a brainstorm: VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology could be used to give small and medium sized companies the same voice and data communications capabilities enjoyed by large organizations at a fraction of the cost. The second part of the brainstorm: developing a business-class, secure, hosted network that could free businesses from making large capital expenditures.

As veterans of Cable and Wireless, Allnet and Teleglobe Business Solutions, iCore’s upper management faced only one obstacle: although VoIP technology was proven, no one had ever used it in a secure, redundant, business-class setting.

Founded in 2001, iCore spent three years developing and perfecting the technology, transforming VoIP into VoPI (Voice over Private Internet). Signing up its first customer in 2004, iCore now services 65,000 business customers, with double- or triple-digit growth every year. iCore reviews all client feedback and uses this information to improve their product/feature set.

How to save clients 40% and give them more capabilities
  • Use a single industry leader, Cisco, for the technology
  • Build a centralized, secure, network and data center with fully redundant systems and power back-up
  • Mandate that every new employee begin in customer service
  • Solicit customer ideas, opinions and criticisms to improve and expand features and services
  • Provide a managed, secure, hosted, end-to-end voice and data system, so customers have a single point of contact for all voice and data needs
  • Boost customers’ productivity and ROI by giving them the ability to treat multiple locations like a single, virtual facility


Columbia Field Office
8850 Stanford Boulevard
Suite 2800
Columbia, MD 21045

General Information, Comments, iCore Reviews:
703-673-1350
info@icore.com

______________________________________________

Corporate Headquarters BITHGROUP Technologies, Inc.
113 West Monument Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21201
Phone: 410-962-1188
Fax: 410-962-6535

General Inquiries:
info@bithgroup.com

Human Resources:
staffing@bithgroup.com

Webmaster:
webmaster@bithgroup.com

  Regional Offices BITHGROUP Technologies maintains its corporate headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland. Our expanded facility will provide more office & laboratory space, and will house both BITHGROUP Technologies and Entreteach Learning Systems, LLC. To provide market penetration, BITHGROUP Technologies also maintains office locations in these locations:

  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania   • Huntsville, Alabama   • Plainfield, New Jersey   • Columbia, Maryland   • Baltimore, Maryland (UMB Biotech Park)

________________________________________________
IN THE CASE BELOW YOU SEE A SIMILAR PROBLEM WITH THE SAME VoIP SYSTEM AND IN BOTH CASES IT INVOLVES LOTS OF MONEY LOST TO CITY TAXPAYERS BECAUSE THE BOARD OF ESTIMATES GOES WITH THE BID THAT IS MUCH MORE FOR NO REASON THAT WOULD INVALIDATE THE LOW BIDDER.  IN THIS CASE IT IS AN EMPLOYEE OF THE MAYOR WHO MAKES THIS CONNECTION WITH THE ROCKVILLE CONTRACTOR THE MAYOR INSISTS ON USING.  MEANWHILE, THE CONTRACTOR MAKING THE LOW BID AND THAT SHOULD BE WINNING THE AWARD IS TOLD BY THE MAYOR TO TAKE A HIKE.

I CANNOT SAY THIS IS A PAY-TO-PLAY, BUT IT SEEMS A CONNECTED COMPANY IS GETTING GOVERNMENT WORK FOR MORE THAN IS NECESSARY.
Baltimore Comptroller Sues City Over Phone System
October 13, 2012 11:03 AM  WJZ/CBS


  BALTIMORE (AP) — The Baltimore comptroller is suing the administration of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to block its office of information technology from installing a new phone system.

Comptroller Joan M. Pratt says the selection of the new system subverted the competitive bidding process in “illegal” fashion and that the contract should have been awarded to the lowest bidder.

The suit, filed Friday in Baltimore City Circuit Court, is the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute about the Voice over Internet Protocol phone system.

Ryan O’Doherty, a spokesman for Rawlings-Blake, tells The Baltimore Sun that he hasn’t seen the suit but called the case a waste of taxpayer dollars and ill-advised. He says the mayor’s administration had been trying to arrange a solution with the comptroller’s office.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

__________________________________________________
IF THERE IS ONE PERSON THAT SYMBOLIZES ALL THAT IS FRAUDULENT AND CORRUPT IN BALTIMORE IT IS ROBERT CURRAN.  MAKE NO MISTAKE, HE IS IN GOOD COMPANY, BUT THIS MAN HAS A LOOK IN HIS EYE THAT SAYS 'DARTH VADER HAS NOTHING ON ME'!   WHAT AN EVIL-LOOKING GUY.  HE IS AN EXAMPLE OF POLITICAL FAMILIES IN BALTIMORE AS IS RAWLINGS-BLAKE.  BELOW YOU WILL SEE HE CHAIRS AND IS APART OF ALL THE COMMITTEES ABOUT WHICH I SPEAK EACH DAY.  HEALTH, LABOR, AND EDUCATION ALL UNDER SIEGE AND ALL CORRUPT.  IF LOOKS COULD KILL, I WOULD BE 6 FEET UNDER AS I SHOUT OUT ABOUT THE JOB HE ISN'T DOING!!!!

District 3: Robert Curran 410-396-4812
410-396-8621 (fax)
Room 553, City Hall
Robert.Curran@baltimorecity.gov

Committees: Chair, Health; Chair, Labor; Judiciary and Legislative Investigations; Education.

Councilman Curran, a son of the late City Councilman J. Joseph Curran and Catherine Mary Curran, was born July 17, 1950. He is a graduate of Loyola High School and attended Mount Saint Mary's College and the Community College of Baltimore. He is a brother of Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. and former Councilman, the late Martin E. "Mike" Curran. His sister, the late Sister Margaret Curran, was a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame community.

Councilman Curran was first elected to office as a member of the Baltimore City Democratic State Central Committee in 1982 and is currently vice chair of the Baltimore Democratic Party. He also serves on the executive committee of the Maryland Democratic Party.

Councilman Curran was elected to the Baltimore City Council in 1995. He is a member of the Original Northwood Community Association and the Society of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick. Currently, he is on leave from his position as foreman with the Domino Sugar Corporation in South Baltimore and is a former member of Local 692 of the Retail Clerks International. Councilman Curran is married to Janice Vetter.

BaltimoreCity.gov | Baltimore City Council Home | Cou

_____________________________________________________
NAACP'S Kim Truehart is a regular in City Hall and she works hard in getting her voice out......and you have to work hard.  She is the one who shouts about failed attention to public interest in these bids.  She would have been shouting today if she wasn't being hauled out by police!!!!

Activist arrested at City Hall Police say frequent critic of Baltimore mayor behaved 'disorderly'


Kim Trueheart arrest (Handout photo by Mike McGuire / January 23, 2013)

By Luke Broadwater The Baltimore Sun 12:39 p.m. EST, January 23, 2013

A frequent critic of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's administration was arrested Wednesday when she tried to enter Baltimore's City Hall.

Kim A. Trueheart, 55, of Baltimore, was arrested Wednesday morning as she tried to attend the city's 9 a.m. Board of Estimates meeting. Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said he had few details about the arrest, but said Trueheart was being "disorderly."

"City Hall is a public building, but we have an obligation to make sure that citizens that come to conduct business don't pose any type of threat and they're also respectful," Guglielmi said. "There's a certain decorum that's expected at City Hall." 

It was not immediately clear what charges Trueheart was facing, or where she was taken after the arrest.

Fellow citizen activist Mike McGuire, 40, of Baltimore, said he witnessed the arrest. He said the officers told Trueheart she was banned from City Hall for 30 days because of an incident that occurred last week.

He said officers told Trueheart, "You know you can't be here," and Trueheart responded, "Why can't I be here? What law have I broken?"

McGuire said officers were forcing Trueheart from the building when they arrested her.

Last week, Rawlings-Blake abruptly ended a news conference when Trueheart began to interrupt the mayor's responses to reporters' questions.

As a police officer stood between Trueheart and the mayor, Trueheart began to question the officer in a loud voice.

"Why are you pushing me?" she asked. "Why are you pushing me? I think police harassment is going on right here. I’m not sure why you’re pushing me. You need to move away from me. You need to stop pushing me."

Trueheart then began to question Rawlings-Blake about Comptroller Joan Pratt's allegations that the city is wasting millions of dollars on a problematic upgrade of its aging, expensive phone system.

"Why are you wasting $400,000 a month?" Trueheart asked. "$400,000 a month is being wasted. Are you going to do something about it?" 

Rawlings-Blake then ended the press conference, and later answered reporters' questions upstairs behind a locked door.

Guglielmi said security asked Trueheart to leave City Hall after that incident.

"Officers last week has asked her to leave the building," he said. "Today, she came back to City Hall and became disorderly again. She was asked to leave numerous times. Officers placed her under arrest for her disorderly behavior." 

After last week's encounter, Trueheart wrote a message on Twitter, saying she had been ejected from the building.

"Guess who got themself BANNED from City Hall today? #NoTransparency #NoIntegrity," she wrote.

Luke.Broadwater@baltsun.com

Twitter.com/lukebroadwater

0 Comments

January 22nd, 2013

1/22/2013

0 Comments

 
The democratic base understands the nature of the current DNC....Third Way corporate and global...and I agree she fits right in with that group.  These are the people who look you right in the eye as you demand the fraud be addressed across all business sectors and they all say 'what fraud'?  I listened to a APM Marketplace interview with the Mayor of Miami......a city that rivals Baltimore in fraud and corruption and just as with Maryland's O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake he attributed all of the government watchdog reports of malfeasance a 'problem with paperwork'.  This has become the code for 'I'll do anything to advance the interests of the 1% no matter the costs to the general public.  That is the Third Way corporate democratic stance and it is why O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake has a national stance.......they are rampant team players with this!!

Those looking at these Maryland politicians know what it takes to be in this crony political environment and as an extension can imagine why they have been selected to move forward in the DNC.  THE PROBLEM WITH ALL OF THIS INEQUITY, CRIME, AND CORRUPTION STARTS WITH THIRD WAY POLICY.  LABOR AND JUSTICE MIGHT NOT BE CRIME FREE IN ANY SENSE, BUT THE FOCUS IS ON PEOPLE AND NOT CORPORATE INTERESTS!

Think of how just these two pols have spoon fed the Baltimore Development Corp and have article upon article published as to crime, corruption, and unaccountability..........IS THAT WHAT YOU REALLY WANT IN YOUR FUTURE LEADERSHIP?

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!

RUN LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES IN THE NEXT ELECTIONS!!!

The bad news for these two leaders and for the Third Way corporate caucus is that the democratic base has caught on even as mainstream media tried its best to cover for them.  The democratic base represents 80% of the democratic party to the 20% of corporate Third Way types so these Third Way are a dying breed.  It takes a while to organize in a captured media environment but as with Europe who is seeing an overwhelming shift from corporate liberal to labor...yes we can!!!!


Rawlings-Blake to take leadership post at DNC

Stephanie Rawlings-Blake as Mayor of Baltimore as she is sworn in by Frank Conaway Sr. (Lloyd Fox, Baltimore Sun / December 6, 2011)

By John Fritze, The Baltimore Sun 11:10 a.m. EST, January 21, 2013

WASHINGTON — Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will become the secretary of the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday, giving her a prominent role in national politics.

The appointment, which has not been formally announced, will give Rawlings-Blake a voice in the party's national political apparatus at a time when President Barack Obama is beginning his second term and several Democrats — including Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley — are thought to be jockeying for the 2016 nomination.

"My hope is that we can carry forward the momentum of the Obama administration and that we can continue to grow the Democratic Party," Rawlings-Blake said Monday in Washington, where she was attending Obama's second inauguration. "It's about making sure that we activate the majority of the people in the country."

The move comes as former Obama campaign aides are launching a permanent advocacy group called Organizing for Action that hopes to marshal the volunteer muscle that twice elected him to the White House. Some Democrats have questioned whether the group, which will accept donations, could cut into the party's influence.

A DNC spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The most public role the party secretary performs is to call the roll of delegates at the national convention — a largely symbolic act of recognizing each state on the floor to determine which candidate its delegates will support. Behind the scenes, the secretary is responsible for scheduling meetings, distributing talking points to members and, occasionally, campaigning for candidates across the country.

Rawlings-Blake, 42, has served as Baltimore's mayor since 2010 and has presided over the city at a time of historic lows in homicides and fire deaths. A former president of the City Council, she also has led the city through trying budget times.

The daughter of the late Del. Howard P. Rawlings, she helped change the direction of city and state politics when in 1999 she convinced her influential father to back O'Malley, a white councilman from Northeast Baltimore, in his bid for mayor of a majority-black city. O'Malley and Rawlings-Blake have remained close allies.

The current DNC secretary, Alice Germond, has served for three consecutive terms — predating Obama's first term. Active in the party for more than four decades, Germond is married to longtime political writer and former Baltimore Sun columnist Jack Germond.

"I wish her very well," Alice Germond said of Rawlings-Blake. "I've enjoyed being the secretary for a long time. It's a tremendous honor."

The decision, which must be confirmed by what is expected to be a perfunctory vote by party leaders, appears to have been made quickly. Rawlings-Blake said she first learned of the appointment Sunday when she was in Washington attending a reception for Vice President Joe Biden's official inauguration.

Baltimore Sun reporter Luke Broadwater contributed to this article.

_________________________________________________

The state budget's turnaround has everything to do with mortgage and bank fraud settlements that just get put in the State General Fund and do not make it to the people who were victims of the frauds and it does not make any attempt to rebuild the non-existing white collar criminal agencies as is directed in all settlements.  Maryland has a habit of making it impossible for its citizens to seek damages for fraud on their own and when the state or federal government makes even a cursory settlement it rarely makes it to the people.

What is important to remember is this: 

The state owes $1.5 billion at the very least to Baltimore City Schools per law suits; $700 million needs to go to underserved communities from mortgage fraud so they can decide how to spend the money; the public sector pensions need to be fully funded as we are not going to watch them disappear through neglect; the transportation fund which we all are sure was a victim to budget balancing now needs to be replenished without taxing average citizens or Wall Street credit bond instruments as the Muni-market is getting ready to implode.

So, there really isn't a balanced budget there is just a deliberate decision to not pay people what the state owes them and calling it a closed case.......which isn't first world and it is not democratic.....it is a campaign stunt.


Big improvements for Md.'s budget Our view: Gov. O'Malley's spending plan still has some soft spots, and dangers lie ahead, but it represents a remarkable turnaround in the state's fortunes

2:35 p.m. EST, January 17, 2013  Baltimore Sun

Amid the boasting typical of a governor's budget proposal, Gov. Martin O'Malley's new spending plan includes this peculiar claim to fame: The O'Malley administration has managed to effectively eliminate Maryland's structural budget deficit not just once but two times. This is a bit like bragging that you've married the same person twice — it suggests you've gotten to the right place in the end but glosses over some unpleasantness in the middle.

The fiscal unpleasantness, in Mr. O'Malley's case, was particularly severe, and to be fair, not really his fault. When Mr. O'Malley came into office in 2007, the state had a substantial cash reserve, thanks to the real estate bubble, but obvious underlying budget problems. That fall, Mr. O'Malley pushed through a package of new revenues — tax increases and slot machine gambling — and new spending that, on balance, should have put the state on sound footing. Then the global economy melted down, and the state was in worse shape than ever.

The climb back has been long and painful, but it is nearly complete — at least for the moment. The state's structural deficit — the chronic imbalance between projected spending and revenue — falls to just $166 million, according to the Department of Budget and Management. Considering the gap for this year was estimated at one point to be almost $1.9 billion, that's quite a turnaround, and little of it came easily.

The O'Malley administration and the General Assembly approved income and alcohol tax increases, shifted some teacher pension costs to local government and benefited from some modest improvements in the economy. The bulk of the improvement, however, comes from holding spending to a much slower rate of growth than had been expected — thanks in no small part to innovative efforts in the health department to hold down Medicaid costs. That the governor has managed to do that during such difficult economic times while maintaining historic investments in K-12 and higher education is remarkable and a testament to his priorities.

Still, it's not time for celebration just yet. Mr. O'Malley uses his budget book to tout Maryland's recovery from the recession and its record of job growth in recent years, but that progress is exceedingly fragile. A failure by Congress to raise the federal debt ceiling could ruin the economy again, and Maryland is more vulnerable than almost any other state to the kinds of spending cuts that will be required to bring the federal budget deficit back to a manageable size.

Meanwhile, there are some soft spots remaining in Governor O'Malley's budget. He is proposing that the state not make this year's installments in its plans to repay an income tax reserve fund the state raided during the height of the recession, or open space funds diverted by the Ehrlich administration. Each move saves the state $50 million. And Mr. O'Malley is proposing to continue for the next five years his practice of shifting real estate transfer tax funds from their intended purpose, land preservation programs, to the general fund, and instead paying for those programs through capital funds. Such a maneuver is legal, and previous budgets relied much more heavily on it and tactics like it. They got us through the recession, but their long-term cost is becoming apparent.

Debt service payments have increased from $654 million in Governor O'Malley's first year in office to a projected $984 million next year. By 2022, annual payments are expected to approach $1.5 billion. The state portion of the property tax is dedicated to making those payments, and it is expected to grow only modestly during that time. Before long, the state will likely have to raise the property tax rate or start dedicating money that could otherwise go to pay for schools, health care or other operating expenses to pay off the bonds.

The new spending and tax breaks the governor is proposing for next year are relatively modest. He is asking for a 3 percent pay raise for state workers, perfectly reasonable given the pay freezes and furloughs of recent years; a $25 million investment in school safety; $1.5 million for a much needed-study of the environmental and economic costs and benefits of allowing hydraulic fracturing in Western Maryland; and an assortment of new or expanded tax credits designed to boost employment in cybersecurity, the film industry and other sectors.

Still, legislators should carefully examine them and the rest of the $37.3 billion spending plan. The General Assembly could easily cut enough to wipe out what remains of the structural deficit, but that need no longer be the major focus. Given the uncertainty created by federal budget deliberations and the costs the state put off during the last few years, lawmakers need to concern themselves with increasing the resiliency of Maryland's finances. Governor O'Malley wisely proposed to increase the state's rainy day fund from 5 percent of revenues to 6 percent, and he is leaving another $236 million in unallocated funds. Legislators should seek to go further to help the state withstand what could be more difficult times ahead.

______________________________________________
THE ONLY WAY THAT JAMES CLYBURN COULD ADVANCE INTO THE HOUSE LEADERSHIP WAS TO JOIN THE THIRD WAY CAUCUS.  THOSE OF US WHO WATCH THIS STUFF UNDERSTAND THAT CLYBURN WAS NOT THIRD WAY BEFORE HE ASKED FOR THIS LEADERSHIP POSITION.

THIRD WAY HAS CAPTURED OUR DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEADERSHIP AND THE DEMOCRATIC BASE OF LABOR AND JUSTICE MUST REPLACE THIRD WAY IN THE MAJORITY AND LEADERSHIP TO REVERSE THIS HOLD CORPORATIONS HAVE ON CONGRESS!!!!

Third Way Home

Third Way Co-Chair James Clyburn

US House, South Carolina

President Barack Obama has said he is, “One of a handful of people who, when they speak, the entire Congress listens.” As Assistant Democratic Leader in the 112th Congress, the number three Democrat in the House, James E. Clyburn will be the leadership liaison to the Appropriations Committee and one of the Democratic Caucus’ primary liaisons to the White House. Working with the internal caucuses, he’ll play a prominent role in messaging and outreach.

His humble beginnings in Sumter South Carolina, as the eldest son of an activist fundamentalist minister and an independent civic minded beautician, grounded him securely in family, faith and public service. He was elected president of his NAACP youth chapter when he was 12 years old, helped organize many civil rights marches and demonstrations as a student leader at South Carolina State College, and even met his wife Emily in jail during one of his incarcerations.

When Clyburn came to Congress in 1993, he was elected co-President of his Freshman class and quickly rose through leadership ranks. He was elected Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1999, and his reputation as a leader and consensus-builder helped him win a difficult three-way race for House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair in 2002. Three years later, he was unanimously elected Chair of the Democratic Caucus. When Democrats regained the House majority in 2006, Congressman Clyburn was elevated by his colleagues to House Majority Whip.

As a national leader he has worked to respond to the needs of America’s diverse communities. He championed rural communities supporting the development of regional water projects, community health centers, and broadband connections. He has supported higher education by leading the charge for increased Pell grants; investing millions in science and math programs and historic preservation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He has encouraged economic development by securing funding for Empowerment Zones; investing in green technology development such as nuclear, wind, hydrogen and biofuels; and directing 10 percent of Recovery Act funding to communities 20 percent under the poverty level for the past 30 years. Clyburn was instrumental in advancing into law measures to resolve historic discrimination issues, significantly reducing the statutory disparity in cocaine sentencing and compensating African and Native American farmers who suffered racial discrimination under the USDA loan program

Jim and Emily Clyburn have three daughters, Mignon, Jennifer Reed, and Angela Hannibal; two sons-in-law, Walter Reed and Cecil Hannibal; and two grandchildren, Walter A Clyburn Reed and Sydney Alexis Reed.
_______________________________________________

Third Way corporate democrats are represented in policy by the Brookings Institute. Here you see that this think tank is and has always been about global interests and is the source of Reagan's and Clinton's move to break the Glass Steagall wall to build global corporate empires. THESE ARE NOT PEOPLE WORKING FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE'S INTEREST.......YOU AND I ARE SIMPLY SOMETHING THAT HAS TO BE PLACATED IN THIS RUSH TOWARDS EMPIRE BUILDING.

We must take back the democratic party if we are to make these industries accountable to the American people rather than the reverse!!! Run and vote for labor and justice these next elections!!

Terrible Imperialism
The Brookings Institution: a Think Tank of Good Feelings

The Brookings Institution is generally presented as Democrats’ main think tank (a usually political center of research, propaganda and spreading of ideas), though it is mainly a representative entity of moderate elites which favors a limited economic regulation opposed to the American Enterprise Institute’s libertarian patters. Today, it is very active in foreign policy and, as well as neoconservatives, it suggests the use of force but for humanitarian reasons and as a duty and not based on a democratic evangelism or a biased enthusiasm. Half of its researchers were former members of the National Security Council or the White House.

Voltaire Network | 30 June 2004 français  русский  Español  Just before U.S.’s entry into WWI in 1916, businessman Robert S. Brookings and his friends financed the creation of an institute of governmental research that would be called Brookings Institution. Since they were convinced that good management is not based on political decisions but on the quality of its technical capacity, they identified a group of six researchers, including a professor of Political Sciences of Princeton University, to work with the President of John Hopkins University.

During the war, the institute worked for the National Defense Council and once it ended, it analyzed the budgetary consolidation of the country. In the 30s it advised candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt though its New Deal project was criticized. During WWII, the Brookings Institution worked on prices control and war economy. Later, in 1946, it focused on rebuilding Europe and made all necessary economic assets for the Marshal Plan as a complement of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) political studies [1].

In the 50s and 60s, the Brookings Institution increased its financial sources and signed major research contracts with the federal state, always to study economic issues. Its position is recognized as a center-right institution and progressively identified with the Democratic Party although many of its members were and still are republicans. Consequently, its funds and influence depended on the White House. It was powerful during Kennedy and Johnson but Nixon’s administration did not renew its contracts. Nevertheless, it flourished again under Carter’s though languished during Reagan’s to reemerge again during Clinton’s.

Today’s Brookings Strobe Talbott In 2002, Strobe Talbott became the sixth president of the Institute whereas John L. Thornton was the head of its Administration Council, among which Teresa Heinz was included. Talbott was Time Magazine’s former director of foreign services, Under Secretary of State, and a man Bill Clinton, his old roommate at the university, trusts in. As a member of the troika [2] that was supposed to negotiate with Yugoslavia the prevention of the war in 1999 he became internationally renowned. On the other hand, Thornton, professor of economics, is the President of Goldman Sachs. Teresa Heinz is Senator John Kerry’s wife [3]. It seems that all members of the Administration Council were approved by the Council on Foreign.

In 1998 and with the purpose of reaching a consensus, Brookings Institution -considered as a Center Right entity - came to an agreement with the extreme right wing American Enterprise Institute (AEI) [4] to set up a joint program for studying the federal rules on economic regulation. Its analyses were reviewed by the Council of Economic Advisers of the White House.

Brookings Institution has also studied international matters and they are currently a third of its researches. It has three main working groups: The Center for the Study of Northern Asia Polices: it monitors Japan and Korea but it is mainly focused on the simultaneous relations of America with China and Taiwan. It is directed by Richard C. Bush III, former director of the North American Institute of Taiwan, and supervised by J. Stapleton Roy, former American ambassador to China and Henry Kissinger’s business partner. Among its researchers, Michael O’Hanlon has become a figure in television studies and Congress hearings, extremely loquacious on North Korean nuclear danger.

The Center for the Study of U.S. and Europe: Previously the Center for U.S. and France, it was extended to study Turkey, Russia and Italy. It is directed by Philip H. Gordon and mainly financed by the federal State, through the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and industrial Daimler-Chrysler.

Philip H. Gordon This Center is linked to an equally called program directed by Guillaume Parmentier at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) which is completely bipartisan though neoconservatives have their own niche.

Guillaume Parmentier The Saban Center for Middle East Policy: Its analyses are made from American and Zionist perspectives. It is directed by Martin S. Indyk, former American ambassador to Tel Aviv and co-founder of WINEP, a think tank of Likud. It was name after his sponsor, Jewish millionaire Haim Saban, co-owner of Fox TV, and was inaugurated by Abd Allah, King of Jordan.

Haim Saban One of Brookings Institution’s employees is Kenneth M. Pollack, author of a reference book on the Iraqi war which was written before the hostilities. According to it, certain conditions should have been met before launching the attack. Even though it could have been used by war opponents, the author has become a justifying-the-war-intellectual.

Other researchers have programs of their own, like Susan Rice, for instance, former assistant to Madeleine Albright, who is working on the threat weak states constitute to American security. Another example is Nigel Purvis, who along with the Pew Center, is working on the possibilities of using U.S aid and cooperation to the Third World to pressure them to make concessions on ecological matters.

Such activities are very impressive for their quantity and the quality of its experts. However, Red Voltaire has noticed that these intellectuals have something in common though they never say it: even when economics and not international politics is their main focus, more than half of Brookings Institution currently 142 researchers seem to have worked for the National Security Council or the White House. The fact that its Council of Administration, composed of multinational patterns, favors companies such as AT&T or Chiquita (former United Fruit) which key role in the National Security Council secret operations is well documented, is quite remarkable.

In the year 2003, Brookings Institution’s goods were assessed at 197 million dollars and a donation of 10 million dollars was added to its profits. The institution budget was calculated at 39 million dollars. 275 persons worked at the main office plus 40 additional researchers abroad. Brookings Institution published 27 reports and 50 books in 2003.



0 Comments

January 21st, 2013

1/21/2013

0 Comments

 
PLEASE DO NOT SIT SILENTLY AS THE SAME FARM TEAM IS CHOSEN TO RUN AND MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO.  IN MARYLAND IT IS HARD TO FIND A POL WITH INTEGRITY THAT ISN'T CAPTURED BY THE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE! 

As I head off to Washington for a protest march to the white house I wanted to look at all the talk on Maryland politics.  We have two years to mount a campaign against the incumbents in state office our we will see this crime and corruption in government and corporations continue.  These farm team players are all on board with the current state of the state. 
The primary concern for Marylander's will be Maryland's ranking at the bottom nationally of all government watchdog and accountability organization's reports for fraud, corruption, lack of transparency, and the latest showing no oversight and suspected wide abuse in business tax breaks. This means that billions of dollars are being taken from government coffers and individual's pockets in plain view of our current state and local politicians. THIS IS BIG NEWS THAT WE NEVER HEAR ON BALTIMORE'S MEDIA STATIONS because they are captured by those moving the money out of Maryland's economy by illegal means.

The importance in these state races, whether for governor or state attorney general is correcting THIS GORILLA IN THE ROOM and as we know, whether Doug Gansler who has 8 years charged with addressing this systemic criminality and successfully ignore almost all of the crime and corruption, our Anthony Brown who has been connected deeply with the privatizing schemes of O'Malley of all that is public and with what we know are ply-to-play schemes that rule the development arena in Maryland and especially in Baltimore. The Columbia executive Ulman is just as steeped in this crime and corruption culture and will not do as a statewide exec.

All the money in the world buying all the advertizing will not fool people over this issue. So whether we look more closely at Mizeur
or push a more credible candidate for office, we will make RETURN TO RULE OF LAW IN MARYLAND THE PRIMARY CAMPAIGN ISSUE!

When Governor O'Malley is faced again and again with reports of fraud and corruption from non-partisan research groups he simply brushes it aside as if it doesn't exist.  This is the same attitude at the Federal level.  IF WE ALLOW THESE PEOPLE WHO OPENLY FLAUNT A DISREGARD TO RULE OF LAW TO STAY IN OFFICE, WE ARE ALLOWING OUR COUNTRY TO MAINTAIN A THIRD WORLD STATUS.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE AND RUN AND ELECT LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES!!!

____________________________________________

WHEN A STATE IS RANKED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE NATION FOR FRAUD AND CORRUPTION AND THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY GIVES MARYLAND A (D-) FOR STATE CORRUPTION........THE STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL IS THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT GRADE.

 Public Access to Information     F                                  
Political Financing
     C  
Executive Accountability     F                                        Legislative Accountability    F
Judicial Accountability     D+                                          
State Budget Processes
      C-
State Civil Service
Management
D-                              
Procurement
     D-
 nternal Auditing   C+                                                   
Lobbying Disclosure      D-
State Pension Fund Management      F                              
Ethics Enforcement Agencies
      D
State Insurance Commissions    F


____________________________________________________


CITIZENS OF MARYLAND AND BALTIMORE ARE FIGHTING SO HARD TO STOP WHAT IS A COMPLETE USURPATION OUR OUR DEVELOPMENT AND AS AN EXTENSION THE HANDING OVER OF PUBLIC LAND AND ALL KINDS OF TAX BREAKS TO CORPORATIONS THAT ARE NEVER IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST BUT ARE CLEARLY DRIVEN BY POLITICAL PAY TO PLAY AND OTHER CORRUPT SCHEMES.  O'MALLEY AND RAWLINGS-BLAKE OF MARYLAND ARE THE KING AND QUEEN OF THESE SCHEMES AND THEY REFLECT THESE THIRD WAY CORPORATE POLS WHO RUN AS DEMOCRATS EVEN AS THEY ARE KILLING THE DEMOCRATIC BASE.....AND EVERYONE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH THE 1%.

Future of State Center in question after judge's decision


Rendering of the proposed State Center complex at Howard and MLK. (Mithun / January 14, 2013)

By Steve Kilar 9:37 p.m. EST, January 17, 2013

The $1.5 billion overhaul of State Center in midtown Baltimore is effectively dead after a judge voided development contracts essential to the project.

“The court’s ruling reconfirms the significance of following the competitive bidding laws,” said Alan M. Rifkin, the attorney for a group of business owners and landlords who sued the state, alleging that the contracts were illegitimate.

Unless the state mounts a successful appeal and can resurrect the public-private partnership deal, the court order Thursday requires the state to go back to the drawing board on the project, in the pipeline since the administration of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. A new start would mean following the state’s procurement laws, which require finding public financing for the project — a tall order in austere times.

Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler’s office declined to say whether it would appeal Baltimore Circuit Judge Althea M. Handy’s ruling. The state is reviewing its options, said David Paulson, a spokesman for Gansler.

“We’re discouraged by Judge Handy’s conclusions,” said Caroline G. Moore, founding partner and CEO of Ekistics, State Center’s lead developer. The project has been through five Board of Public Works approvals and “hundreds” of public meetings, she said.

The Baltimore firm will consider all avenues for recourse, Moore said. At least Handy ruled quickly, she said, “so we can get on to the next step.”

The State Center deal guaranteed the developer long-term, above-market leases with state agencies that would enable the builders to secure financing. The arrangement leased state land to the developer, which agreed that the tract and structures would revert eventually to state ownership.

The landlords and business owners, from downtown and Little Italy, filed suit in 2010 alleging that the State Center lease terms would create unfair competition and cripple the downtown’s struggling economy.

The mixed-use plan for the 28-acre site would have replaced 1950s-era structures that house several state agencies with space for 3,500 state employees, residences and retail space. It was to be built over a period of 15 years but has been stalled by the litigation.

“Despite the purported structure of the transaction, the ‘essence of the transaction’ was not a simple disposition of land ... but a complex, creative way to develop state land,” Handy said in the order. The contracts, therefore, are subject to the procurement code, she said.

The Maryland attorney general’s office, during a hearing Tuesday, asserted that the contracts constituted the state disposing of land to a developer of its choice. Tuesday’s hearing was on the state’s motion for summary judgment.

“The court finds, and the defendants admit, that defendants did not comply with the procedures required in the code, therefore, the [contracts] and the ground leases are void,” Handy wrote.

Handy’s decision marks the fourth blow for the State Center plans.

She had previously denied the state’s motion to dismiss the case and threw out a $100 million countersuit the attorney general’s office filed on behalf of the state Department of Transportation and the Department of General Services, which are overseeing the project in conjunction with a private developer. The state contended that the delay caused by the business owners’ and landlords’ suit, financed largely by Orioles owner and trial attorney Peter G. Angelos, increased costs of construction, financing and building maintenance.

A General Assembly bill last year that set out new rules for public-private partnerships failed. The bill offered an expedited legal process for some public-private developments and would have applied retroactively to the State Center deal. The O’Malley administration plans to reintroduce a revised bill this year, which could restart the project if passed.

For now, the landlords and business owners are satisfied — and hope that the state will rethink its strategy, put more resources into the downtown and abandon the State Center plan.

“In the downtown district, rates are still above 20 percent vacancy,” said Dave Johnson, senior vice president of Lexington Charles LP, one of the landlord plaintiffs.

Too many large office buildings in the city center have gone into foreclosure and the owners of others remain stressed by mortgages, he said. A new development just north of the Inner Harbor would not help many downtown properties, which often appeal only to government agencies, Johnson said.

“With this ruling, we can at least stop, take a deep breath and reassess,” he said. “It would be great public policy if the state decided to invest in downtown.”

Bonnie Scible, owner of Bonnie’s Peanut Shoppe at North Charles and West Saratoga streets, was delighted by the news because a third of her customers are state employees, who might move to State Center if it is rebuilt, she said.

“When I moved here, on Charles Street, I was very happy because I thought I was at the heart of everything,” Scible said. “A business like mine, you really need a lot of foot traffic.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Candy Thomson contributed to this article.

Have a real estate news tip or experience to share? Email me at steve.kilar@baltsun.com.

________________________________________________




 Study: More corruption means more tax breaks for businesses
Posted by Suzy Khimm at 09:00 AM ET, 11/06/2011  Washington Post


A new study shows that municipalities with larger numbers of corrupt politicians are more likely to give out special tax breaks and other incentives to individual businesses. In a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, R. Alison Felix and James R. Hines, Jr find that “increasing the rate at which government officials are convicted of federal corruption crimes by 1 per 100,000 residents over a 13 year period is associated with a 2.9 percent greater chance that a community will offer business incentives” to individual firms, including tax abatements, tax credits, and tax increment financing of infrastructure projects.
(SOURCE: NBER)

Felix and Hines explain that it’s not just because a small handful of corrupt officials are doing pay-to-play on a huge scale. Instead, they conclude that it’s because there’s a correlation between political corruption and policy dysfunction: “Jurisdictions in states with troubled political cultures are more likely than others to have dysfunctional tax and regulatory systems that make it difficult for them to compete for businesses except by offering special incentives.” Instead, low-corruption communities “prefer to tailor their general tax levels, spending programs, and other policies to attract businesses without designing specific deals for specific firms and industries,” they write. As a result, only 53 percent of cities and counties in states with comparatively  low rates of corruption offer these kinds of municipal tax breaks to businesses at all, while 67 percent of more corrupt communities do.



_____________________________________________________

THIS ONE LAW......NAMESAKE OF OUR MARYLAND SARBANES FAMILY WOULD PUT ALL EXECUTIVES IN JAIL FOR YEARS IF IT WAS ENFORCED.  THE FACT THAT WE HAVE A GOVERNMENT THAT THINKS IT CAN CHOOSE NOT TO ENFORCE LAW  WHENEVER EXPEDIENT SHOULD SCARE EVERYONE!!!!

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

On July 30, 2002, President Bush signed into law the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which he characterized as "the most far reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt." The Act mandated a number of reforms to enhance corporate responsibility, enhance financial disclosures and combat corporate and accounting fraud, and created the "Public Company Accounting Oversight Board," also known as the PCAOB, to oversee the activities of the auditing profession.

The full text of the Act is available at: http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/15C98.txt. (Please check the Classification Tables maintained by the US House of Representatives Office of the Law Revision Counsel for updates to any of the laws.)  You can find links to all Commission rulemaking and reports issued under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act at:  http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/sarbanes-oxley.htm.

_______________________________________________

We must accept Obama's reinstatement of Eric Holder and know that corporate fraud will be protected again this next term, but we must look to our state and local levels to elect people who are not working to protect fraudsters.........we do have leaders that are speaking and they should be encouraged to run. In Maryland we want Greenberger running as Attorney General or Governor.

Greenberger faulted the Obama administration for regarding these practices as “immoral, unethical, and reckless,” but won’t go so far as to say they were criminal. No one has been indicted as happened during the Savings and Loan crisis, he says, when 400 were.

Greed, Lack of Transparency Caused Financial Crisis, Says Greenberger

Bad mortgage loans, obscured through complex and unregulated investment instruments, cost taxpayers billions By Gary Feuerberg
Epoch Times Staff Created: November 6, 2012 Last Updated: November 16, 2012 Related articles: United States » National News
Michael Greenberger, professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, served as director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 1997-1999. Greenberger was the guest at the Center for National Policy on Nov. 1, 2012. (Gary Feuerberg/ The Epoch Times)

WASHINGTON—The U.S. economy is slowly making a recovering from a near-collapse and the worst recession since the Great Depression.

But what brought on the subprime mortgage crisis that led to huge financial losses, a decline in wealth for much of the country, a GDP drop of 5 percent for the period from Dec. 2007 to June 2009, and an official unemployment rate that peaked at 10.0 percent in Oct. 2009?

“Very few people understand [what happened],” said University of Maryland Professor Michael Greenberger at the Center for National Policy on Nov. 1. “I firmly believe that the president of the United States doesn’t understand. They don’t understand what went wrong.”

In layman’s terms, Greenberger attempted to explain the essence of how the near collapse of our financial system came about. It’s a story involving new complex financial creations that mask the risks that investors take. The story is also about the role of the federal government—that is, the taxpayers—in rescuing the banks, and the story is ultimately about “criminal” behavior that has eluded prosecution, says Greenberger.

Since 2001, Greenberger has been a professor of the Maryland School of Law. He has frequently been asked to testify before Congressional committees related to financial markets and complex and unregulated financial derivatives. He was director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where he served under Chairperson Brooksley Born.



Advertisement Greenberger was Born’s chief of staff in the late 1990s when they encountered fierce opposition to regulating the multi-trillion-dollar over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives markets whose crash later would be a major factor in bringing on the financial crisis. They wanted these derivatives traded transparently with adequate capital reserves and overseen by a regulator to prevent fraud and manipulation. Bill Clinton’s senior economic policy advisers—Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, his deputy Lawrence Summers, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, and Security Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt offered vitriolic criticism of Born and the CFTC. Also, the titans in the financial industry and many in Congress were adamantly opposed. Born and Greenberger lost that battle but after the financial meltdown in 2008, the need for regulation and transparency of the derivatives market could not be denied.

$12,000 annual income, $729,000 mortgage Greenberger began with an illustration which anyone could understand, taken from Michael Lewis’ book, “The Big Short,” about a cherry picker, with an annual salary of $12,000, who actually signed up for a $729,000 mortgage. How could such a thing happen?

There was lots of fraud, robo-signed contracts, and “lying loans,” Greenberger said. Then these mortgages were pooled together as mortgage backed securities.

“[The banks] made these loans that are ridiculous loans—‘liar loans’—and immediately they get them off their books and sell them off to another bunch of investors to buy a share in these mortgage backed securities. But it was too easy for those investors to see that they were buying a share in something that said that a cherry picker earning $12,000 a year would pay back a $729,000 mortgage,” said Greenberger.

“So on a nationwide basis they took many more of these mortgage backed securities and packaged them into something called collateralized debt obligation (CDO).” It was made nationwide to give an investor the impression of less risk similar to when one diversifies one’s portfolio.The idea is that the housing market might collapse, say, in Michigan but it was deemed safe that it would continue to rise in Florida or Nevada where it was booming. Of course, that assumption turned out wrong and the entire U.S. housing market bubble burst and collapsed virtually everywhere.

Then the creators of these investments devices divided the investment into pieces, called tranches, which are different levels of risk and interest rates. One can think of the instrument as analogous to investing in various floors of a beach house. The basement which has the greatest likelihood of flooding would be dubbed the high risk investment and would pay out the most in interest. The other extreme would be the “top floor” which was the safest from flooding and would pay less interest.

Economist Mark Zandi wrote about CDOs in his book “Financial Shock,” “First and foremost, the risks inherent in mortgage lending became so widely dispersed that no one was forced to worry about the quality of any single loan.” Zandi adds, “As shaky mortgages were combined, diluting any problems into a larger pool, the incentive for responsibility was undermined.”

Next, the people who devised these CDOs went to the credit rating agencies, and paid them to rate the various tranches. The “basement” might get BB- rating while the “top floor” would receive a AAA rating on the theory that the top floor will never be flooded.

“So now you have masked the mortgage to a mortgaged backed security into a collateralized debt obligation, and then you got the further mask of the credit agencies Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s are telling us that these are triple A ratings,” said Greenberger, who is convinced that the rating agencies were paid off.

At the time this happened there were only seven public corporations in the United States that had AAA rating, but there were thousands of these tranches that got AAA rated, Greenberger noted. And nobody is investigating what’s behind these AAA ratings, and that behind them is an investment of whether a cherry picker can pay a $729,000 mortgage.

The plot thickens then when Hank Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs (and later Treasury Secretary), who made CDOs a big part of the firm’s business, could see that these investments were going to fail, said Greenberger. He wasn’t alone; others could see the same thing. Just by looking at the percent of mortgage defaults, one could see that the beach house was flooded.

Paulson then asked to buy insurance on some of the tranches that looked like bad bets. Wanting to make a profit on these investments, they devised what are called synthetic CDOs, to bet that the investments would lose value. So, without even owning the tranches, Paulson and many others like him paid one and half to two cents on the dollar as a premium, while the givers of insurance risked 100 cents on the dollar, he says.

Because the law didn’t require the givers of insurance to set aside a capital reserve to cover the debts, we, the taxpayers, ended up paying for the collapse of this market. For example, AIG, a multinational insurance corporation, needed a $185 billion bailout.

“When you generous taxpayers bought AIG, you weren’t really helping the people of AIG, you were really helping the people who bet with AIG,” Greenberger said.

Ethics The leading firm who collected on the bets was Goldman Sachs, said Greenberger, who believes they collected $7 billion on this matter.

To compound matters, betting on the tranches was not just a matter of paying the debt once. Greenberger said that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission investigations found that certain tranches were bet on nine times to fail.

“That means every time someone didn’t pay their mortgage, the consequences in the real economy were multiplied nine times. If you didn’t have the gambling refusal to pay, you would only had the real losses which would have been dramatically less than the betting losses, and the subprime meltdown would have been much, much less, and probably much easier to rebound from.”

Greenberger faulted the Obama administration for regarding these practices as “immoral, unethical, and reckless,” but won’t go so far as to say they were criminal. No one has been indicted as happened during the Savings and Loan crisis, he says, when 400 were.

At the bottom of these practices is one of ethical conduct.

Greg Smith worked at Goldman Sachs. In March he wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times that said that the company was “ripping their clients off.” His new book, “Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story,” was recently released.

He wrote in the Op-Ed, “I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.”


___________________________________________________

Morally Bankrupt Government, Justice Edition Part 1: Enforcement Against Financial Meltdown Perpetrators By Abigail Caplovitz Field | January 16, 2012

Perhaps the clearest window into a nation’s soul is its criminal justice system. Criminal law is legislated morality: certain acts are so vile, we exile the perpetrators to prison. But not every criminal. America will never have enough resources to catch and prosecute all criminals. As a result many guilty go free without ever being pursued, simply because the government decided spend its limited resources elsewhere. Looking at whom the government prosecutes, therefore, is an easy way to see law enforcers’ priorities in action.

Sadly, when it comes to the Financial Meltdown perpetrators, scrutiny reveals those priorities are deeply distorted. Our law enforcers chose to become the protection detail of our wealthy-beyond-dreaming-crooks-in-chief, while throwing the book at their guilty but less destructive subordinates.

Who should we be prosecuting? Well, there’s Dick Fuld of Lehman; James Cayne of Bear, Stearns; Joseph Cassano of AIGFP; Angelo Mozillo of Countrywide; and E. Stanley O’Neal of Merrill Lynch, just to name a few. There’s also all the bailed out top bankers still in power, such as Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, and the meltdown era executives at the other biggest bailout recipients: Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley. And that’s not an exhaustive list.

As I lay out below, AG Holder and President Obama have abandoned the cherished American principle–the core democratic principle–of equality before the law. That’s a kind of moral corruption that strikes at the heart of our national identity. And as best I can tell–again, the evidence follows–this corruption flows from Treasury Department/Wall Street fear mongering and revolving door conflicts of interest.

Worst of all, our top law enforcers abandoned equality before the law precisely when our democracy desperately needs it. Our only defense against the growing tyranny of the 1%, the only means we have of policing the bounds of their power, is the vigorous and equal enforcement of the law.

The Buck Stops with Holder and Obama

A couple of housekeeping notes first: Many at Justice and in the FBI are ethical and moral people who try very hard to do right by the American people. So even though I use the word “Justice” as in Justice Department throughout, my critique does not apply to the people below the very top. Fundamentally only Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama are responsible our Department of Justice’s enforcement priorities.

Attorney General Holder runs the show, but President Obama gave him the job, and can fire him at any time. Holder’s enforcement priorities and strategies therefore must reflect Obama’s priorities. I realize that’s a very formal take, but it’s the only defensible one. I don’t care how much who knew about what, how decisions are or were in fact made, or any other framing or excusing of AG Holder & President Obama’s responsibility for our criminal justice priorities. In our democracy the only political control We, the People have on our national criminal enforcement priorities is our vote for President. And an incumbent President’s strongest advertisement of his enforcement priorities is his Attorney General and his record. The buck stops with them, period.

Judging Justice

Another important caveat about this critique: I’m only looking at all things Financial Meltdown. In this part one, I’m looking at the prosecution of perpetrators, bankers and the companies they run. In part two I look at Justice’s defense of our legal system, of the rule of law itself. While Justice is responsible for many other topics–combating terrorism, for example–the Financial Meltdown devastated our economy, deranged our democracy and destroyed trillions of dollars of ordinary Americans’ wealth. So though I’m only grading one subject, it’s not a gotcha quiz. Nor does it say anything about Justice’s performance in those other areas.

Nor am I rigging the test: Justice itself defined the standard for judging it. The Justice Department’s Mission, as spelled out in its “Performance and Accountability Report 2011” is:

“To enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law, to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic, to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime, to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior, and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.

And Justice cites these core values in guiding its mission:

“Equal Justice Under the Law….”Honesty and Integrity….
“Commitment to Excellence….”Respect for the Worth and Dignity of Each Human Being….”

This mission and these values are animated by “Strategic Goals” and the “strategic objectives,” under each (at p. I-2). For Part 1, this is the only strategic goal and objective that matters:

“II Prevent Crime, Enforce Federal Laws, and Represent the Rights and Interests of the American People

…”2.5 Combat public and corporate corruption, fraud, economic crime, and cybercrime.” [I'm not going to talk about cybercrime.]

Giving Credit Due

Let’s start with Justice’s self-assessment (at p. II-15). Basically, Justice thinks it’s doing a great job: ”the FBI obtained the most convictions in the history of its Corporate and Securities Fraud programs” and took down 340 “criminal enterprises engaging in white collar crimes”, hugely exceeding the target of 250. More; Justice reports it won 93% of its criminal prosecutions, including financial frauds and other categories. (at pp. II-17 to -21) That win percentage shows that when Justice puts crooks on trial, the bad guys don’t really stand a chance. Justice is more dominant than the Steel Curtain. Just ask Jeff Skilling, ex-CEO of Enron.

A closer, and still positive look at Justice’s work on all things Financial Fraud comes from the news pages of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. That task force was set up by President Obama “in November 2009 to hold accountable those who helped bring about the last financial crisis as well as those who would attempt to take advantage of the efforts at economic recovery.”

Highlights from the task force’s 2011 include winning important convictions for bid-rigging that defrauded municipalities; insider trading; executives’ embezzlement from their banks; multiple mortgage fraud schemes; and many other financial crimes. Justice even convicted a major CEO of securities fraud (ex-Duane Reade CEO Anthony Cuti) and took down Lee Bently Farkas, ex-Chairman of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker for bank and securities fraud. Finally, Justice has filed several important civil suits, like one against Deutsche Bank and its mortgage subsidiary MortgageIt, for defrauding HUD.

Those Successes Highlight the Big Failure

So yes, our Justice Department is prosecuting financial fraud on a large scale. But these cases are all against small and medium fish, or at best, are token cases. Why not take on the Great White Sharks, and do system-wide prosecutions? If the excuse is resources, well, that’s a leadership decision, not an insurmountable problem. And the decision is deeply flawed: the failure to target the sharks and clean up fraud systematically has damaged our nation deeply, and leaves it very vulnerable.

Here’s what I mean about small and medium fish: Justice considers 14 people who scammed $47 million using 22 Florida properties a “Large-Scale Mortgage Fraud Conspiracy” and  $23 million in fraudulent loans for 44 NY properties a  ”Massive Mortgage Fraud Scheme“. If those cases are “large scale” and “massive”, what’s the appropriate superlative to talk about the mortgage fraud conspiracy at Countrywide or WaMu or any of the others? What superlative would Justice use if it convicted their executives? SuperMegaGigantoNormous Fraud?

Similarly, the Financial Fraud Task Force went after mortgage modification scams like this not-quite-a-million dollar California loan modification fraud. The crooks in that case targeted homeowners with letters filled with false promises about modification help, and took the money of homeowners who relied on those representations. Now, those crooks deserve what they got; thanks, Justice, for nailing them. But as Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley and Nevada AG Catherine Cortez Masto’s lawsuits detail, the banks have done similar things themselves. (See Coakley’s suit starting at paragraph 124, and Masto‘s whole complaint.)

That is, the banks made and make numerous representations to homeowners that prove false–most devastatingly, that the foreclosure is on hold while the modification is in process–and they take money based on those representations, called trial payments. Under Massachusetts and Nevada law the banks’ practices are illegally deceptive. How come they’re kosher under federal law but the guy in California deserved jail?

So that’s the small fish/shark problem. And no, the Farkas conviction isn’t sufficient to address the issue. Farkas wasn’t one of the biggest boys. If he were one of many, fine. But on his own it’s not enough to matter.

By critiquing token cases, I mean suits like the one against Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank, through MortgageIT, was not the only major bank that defrauded HUD, according to HUD itself. Last May Shahien Nasiripour broke the story on HUD’s internal report essentially indicting Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial for precisely MortgageIT-type claims. Not coincidentally, the Deutsche Bank suit was announced May 3, and Nasiripour’s story hit on May 11–I’ll bet people inside HUD were outraged only Deutsche Bank was charged. Since then only one other defrauding-HUD case has been filed, and it also is relatively small fry: Allied Home Mortgage.

Consider that MortgageIt and Allied Home don’t even rise into the top 25 subprime lenders. When looking at the list, remember that Countrywide and First Franklin/National City/Merrill Lynch are now Bank of America (BofA); Long Beach Mortgage/Washington Mutual and Encore Credit/ECC Capital/Bear Stearns are now part of JPMorgan Chase (JPM); and Wachovia is now part of Wells Fargo (WFC). The liability those banks have surely dwarfs what MortgageIT created for Deutsche Bank or Allied Home created. Since Justice was given the HUD report and its veritable indictments of the biggest banks, why haven’t suits followed? Big, big money’s at stake.

The SEC has taken a similar approach to its CDO cases. Nail each of the big banks for one of dozens of similar securities. Tokenism is just as destructive in that context. Token suits in the face of such widespread wrongdoing have zero deterrent effect.

Recidivism Risk: Why The Failure To Prosecute Matters So Much

Look, AG Holder might say, why are you being so harsh? All the medium and small fry we’ve convicted hurt many people and deserved what they got. Each “token” case is a big deal, a major resources suck, but we’re bringing them anyway.

Well, on the token cases, if MA AG Coakley can sue several big banks at once, so can you. Don’t tell me the Massachusetts AG has more resources than Justice. More: win the cases and they more than pay for themselves. Can you win? Well, consider this case in which private investors beat Citi badly. With facts like those, how could you lose? And there’s similarly damning facts under any part of the Wall Street sidewalk you turn over.

Right now top bankers are so confident no one will prosecute them that they show absolutely no respect for the law. I mean, all the big banks, which means, all the top bankers, have repeatedly violated injunctions they’ve agreed to with the SEC. And why not? As Judge Rakoff noted, the SEC hasn’t enforced a single injunction “against a financial institution for at least the last 10 years.” But it’s more than that; the bankers’ disdain for the law is most clear in the fraudulent documents and the deceptive practices that are part of the banks’ current business model.

New York City hasn’t seen such lawlessness since its murderous 70s, 80s and early 90′s. Residents lived in constant fear, and graffiti marring every inch of every subway car reminded everyone that law enforcement had lost control. NYC’s gold-collar crooks are just as brazen now, wreaking economic violence across our planet. And like the subway graffiti, fraudulent documents defacing every inch of our courts and land records show law enforcement’s impotence.

Law enforcers took back the subway by frisking turnstile jumpers, arresting people for outstanding warrants, seizing guns and drugs. That’s important: police and prosecutors didn’t incarcerate little perps, turnstile jumpers. NY incarcerated violent felons by frisking and identifying turnstile jumpers. In addition, NYC visibly reasserted its control by cleaning the graffiti. The government can regain control of Wall Street by vigorous law enforcement against the Great White Sharks and cleaning up document fraud until not a visible trace remains, and the courts and land records are rendered harder to deface.

One key difference between the two crime waves, however, makes thorough prosecution of this gold-collar one crucial. Violent criminals are not easy to deter, because their decision to commit crime is often fueled by drugs and/or rage. Crime reduction comes more from incapacitation than deterrence. With rational people, however, deterrence is possible. All it takes is for the crook to perceive a high likelihood of getting caught and punished. And Wall Streeters are nothing if not rational, at least in the economic sense. Systematic, consistent, and punitive prosecutions of top gold-collar crooks would have a broad deterrent effect. But it has to be the top guys; the next Angelo Mozillo is not deterred by the prosecution of Angelo Rossi.

And frankly, we can’t afford not to deter gold-collar crooks. Wall Street financial frauds suck up so much wealth, nations are brought to their knees. Madoff’s money pile is an ant hill to banksters’ Burj Kalifa.

Is Holder Kowtowing to Geithner?

Part of Justice’s strategic objective is to “Combat public and corporate corruption”. If Justice were serious about achieving this objective it wouldn’t stop until it had incarcerated Darrel Dochow and his former boss, Scott Polakoff, and perhaps Polakoff’s boss too. Who are these people?

Well, they were top regulators at the Office of the Thrift Supervision (OTS). The OTS was a mindbogglingly bad bank regulator. OTS oversaw AIG, Washington Mutual, Countrywide, IndyMac, and BancUnited, to name a few. In fact, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission used OTS as a case study in regulatory failure. Dodd-Frank put the agency out of its misery, merging it into the better though still awful OCC.

But I don’t want Dochow and Polakoff prosecuted for mere incompetence. See, these “regulators” allowed (Dochow) and even ordered (Polakoff) banks they oversaw to lie about their financial health. These guys knowingly let the banks under their supervision cook their books. And it’s even worse when you consider Dochow’s history; he was part of the last great banking regulatory failure–the Keating scandal.

And yet Justice has to date declined to prosecute. When Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson broke the story last November, they reported that the Dochow case had been referred to Justice for prosecution in 2009, so it’s not like Justice hasn’t heard of the situation. So what gives?

Story and Morgenson quoted a Texas law professor explaining that Treasury was blocking the prosecution because OTS was a subdivision of Treasury. If this case went forward, what else would Justice find to prosecute in Treasury’s actions? But if Justice doesn’t prosecute out of deference to Treasury, well, doesn’t that make Treasury and every bank regulator above the law?

There’s nothing inevitable or necessary about Justice’s deference to Treasury. I mean, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy not only went after the mob, he went after a mobster–Sam Giancana–that had helped elect his brother president. The American people need and deserve an attorney general with that much integrity always, but particularly now.

So that’s where we are on holding the perpetrators of the Financial Meltdown accountable: Small to medium fish incarcerated; big fish and their conspiring regulators not even indicted. Two token cases brought over defrauding the government, but at least five viable cases against bailed-out banks worth many more billions not filed. Add to that dozens of cases brought by the SEC and securities fraud victims that Justice could pick and choose from for targets, but hasn’t. I mean, even if it was something of a joke because he kept his cash, the SEC went after Mozillo.

In all, the record above adds up to the law applied unequally, our economy left at the mercy of banker and regulator recidivism, our Justice system corrupted. But it gets still worse.

Much has been made of a national effort to negotiate with the bailed-out banks over their illegal loan making, servicing and foreclosing practices, their end-run around the public land record system, MERS, and their securities fraud. As the discussions have worn on, it’s become clear that not only is the settlement a hush money effort–look, the banks say, we’ll pay you some billions and you’ll hush up about all the wrong we did–but it’s also now clear that the driver for a quick and dirty settlement is the federal government. At least 14 AGs are so sick of this “law enforcement” charade they’re exploring how best to take effective action together. Why is the Justice doing the bankers’ bidding?

And it’s not just AGs committed to enforcing the law that are realizing Justice is playing for the other team. The FHFA–Fannie & Freddie’s overseer–has also split with Justice. As Nasiripour reported for the Financial Times, FHFA is now working the the NY AG’s office instead of Justice. See, FHFA filed major, evidence-backed lawsuits against all the big banks, but apparently it wants even more negotiating leverage before cutting a deal. (Note to Iowa’s AG Miller, this is how it’s done.)

The NY AG has criminal laws at his disposal, and if the alliance is fruitful, he can use that leverage to get a better deal for FHFA. And the NY AG gets all the documents and evidence FHFA has, simplifying its own enforcement efforts. Yves Smith points out what a slap this alliance is to Justice, since normally it would be the FHFA’s natural ally.

In short, law enforcers serious about enforcing laws and regulators serious about protecting taxpayers are bypassing the Justice department as useless and unhelpful.

So What’s Going On?

I see two basic reasons why Justice has displayed such distorted priorities, and I believe the truth is a combination of both. One possibility is that Secretary Geithner and President Obama’s various Wall Street donors and advisers have convinced AG Holder and President Obama to do this distorted enforcement to avoid another Financial Meltdown. The claim is the Great White Sharks must swim free and their companies be patted on the wrist because the banks’ balance sheets can’t handle the liability, investors can’t handle the uncertainty, and if these guys go to jail, who will run these companies?

But that’s crap. If the banks’ balance sheets can’t handle the liability, liquidate and/or restructure the banks. Since when must we operate in a world with SuperMegaGigantoNormous banks? If Holder and Obama bought this idea, they’ve given in to blackmail.

The other reason doesn’t run through Treasury or Wall Street directly, but from the lawyers that serve them. That is, the revolving door between Justice and the law firm of Covington and Burling meant the people designing the enforcement approach–the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force itself– otherwise made their careers and fortunes defending the banks and bankers Justice isn’t prosecuting.

Here’s some highlights, excerpted from my reporting for DailyFinance last Feburary:

AG Holder: Before becoming AG, Holder was a litigation partner at Covington & Burling in its D.C. office for eight years. His practice involved “high stakes civil litigation and white collar criminal defense.” In 2008, immediately before he became AG, Holder was one of six Covington attorneys ranked top in the country in white collar criminal defense.

Assistant AG Lanny Breuer, Head of Justice’s Criminal Division: Just prior to joining Justice, Breuer was co-chair of Covington’s white collar criminal defense department and also an award winner.

James Garland, who joined Justice with Holder but left in 2010: At Justice, Garland

“advised Attorney General Eric Holder on a range of enforcement issues, with an emphasis on criminal…matters, and helped to spearhead the Department’s response to the ongoing economic crisis. He was deeply involved in the creation of President Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force… He worked closely with senior officials at the White House, Main Justice, the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, and other federal, state, and local enforcement agencies.” [Bold added]

NOTE: the bolded language is no longer in Covington’s bio of Garland. But it was when I wrote the piece last February.

Steve Fagell, who joined Justice with Holder but also left in 2010:

“a member of the Criminal Division’s senior leadership team, [and] a key advisor to Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer …[Fagell] was integrally involved, for example, in the formulation and communication of Division policy in connection with...corporate and securities fraud, and other forms of financial fraud.…Mr. Fagell also coordinated the Division’s work with the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission…[Bold added]

And that’s just a piece of the connections between top Justice folks and Covington.

See, our top prosecutor, his top criminal enforcement deputy, and two key architects of Justice’s approach to Financial Meltdown enforcement all worked or now again work for the very people and companies Justice is failing to prosecute. How much of a coincidence can that be?

Robert F. Kennedy must be spinning in his grave.

AG Holder and President Obama, because you have turned our democracy into a de facto aristocracy, I call you morally bankrupt. However, it’s not too late: you can redeem yourselves at any time. Just indict the big boys, prosecute those epitomes of public corruption, ex-regulator Darryl Dochow and his former boss Scott Polakoff, and sue the heck out of all the big banks.

In short, you can redeem yourselves at any time by starting to vigorously and equally enforce the law. Will you?


0 Comments

January 18th, 2013

1/18/2013

0 Comments

 
PLEASE CHECK MY BLOG BELOW THIS ONE.  I WANTED TO NOTE SOME OF THE ACTIONS THIS COMING WEEK:


This Saturday—Human Rights Dialogue—Fighting for Social and Economic Human Rights

Tomorrow, Saturday, January 19, from 10am to 3pm, the United Workers, Healthcare is a Human Right – Maryland, Public Justice Center, Legal Aid, and the Baltimore Algebra Project are holding a Human Rights Dialogue at the James McHenry Recreation Center (911 Hollins Street, Baltimore, MD 21223). We’ll be commemorating the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and studying the lessons of his Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. Dr. King and the Campaign pressured Washington to pass an Economic Bill of Rights that would include full employment, guaranteed annual income, decent housing, adequate education, and universal health care.

45 years later, we are still fighting for these same basic rights. We are experiencing systemic human rights abuses in every sector. The fight to address these problems requires building a large social movement; a movement of the poor, as Dr. King said, united across color lines to be a “new and unsettling force.” Building this unity across our communities and our issues is key. And this is part of what we are looking to do this Saturday. In Baltimore, development is at the root of most of our most pressing problems. Rec centers and fire stations are closed, while subsidies are handed to big developers. Families are evicted, homes are boarded up, and communities left to decay, while the city spends millions on high profile tourist areas like the Inner Harbor. Development in Baltimore has failed to adequately address the needs of city residents. The answer is Fair Development: where everyone benefits, where communities have a say, and where local government is transparent and accountable to the people. We will discuss this and more on Saturday.

Our last community-wide meeting took place in early October 2012, where the United Workers, the Public Justice Center, Baltimore Occupy Our Homes, and the Baltimore Right to Housing Alliance hosted a screening in Baltimore of the new documentary “Dear Mandela.” The film tells the story of Abahlali baseMjondolo, South Africa’s shack dweller’s movement, and their fight for their homes, challenging state evictions on the streets and in the courts. After the screening, two Abahlali baseMjondolo members, Zodwa Nsibande and Mnikelo Ndabankulu, and folks from several local groups participated in a discussion about the film and their struggles for social and economic human rights, from South Africa to Baltimore City. Below is a short video of excerpts from that discussion. For more about the film, visit www.dearmandela.org.


RECLAIM REV. DR. KING JR’S DREAM

MAKE DR. KING’S BIRTHDAY – WORKER’S & POOR PEOPLES RIGHTS DAY!

PICKET & RALLY AT THE SUPER WALMART STORE

360l Washington Blvd. Baltimore, MD 21227

Sat. January 19, 2013

12 Noon to 1 P.M.

<http://youtu.be/pcxzFum-k5U>

Video of OUR Walmart workers at the Nat'l Peoples Power Assembly on
Dec. 15, 2012 <http://youtu.be/pcxzFum-k5U>

Demand justice for low wage workers from Walmart to McDonalds.
Stand for workers rights from Michigan to Maryland!
Say NO to so-called “right to work” laws and YES to raising the
minimum wage!
No to inadequate health care and lack of right’s on the job!

One out of every four persons in Baltimore City is reportedly living
in poverty. Many of those who live in poverty actually work, but at
jobs that pay next to nothing. In many cases these same workers are
employed by multi-billion dollar, greedy corporations like Wal-Mart
and McDonalds.

Let’s stand together! If Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were
alive today he would be walking the picket line.

HEAR: Representatives of the OUR Walmart campaign; low wage workers
fighting to raise the minimum wage; and many others. Let’s let
Walmart know that those in the community support the Walmart workers;
that “an injury to one is an injury to all”.

Initiated by:

Baltimore Southern Christian Leadership Conference

and the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly

For more info: call 410-500-2168 or 410-218-4835

Join the Maryland Justice for Low Wage Workers!

J4LWW

a focus group of the Peoples Power Assembly

Dear Super Walmart Manager,

We the undersigned, community, civil rights, student, and religious
leaders, have picked this special weekend, the weekend commemorating
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, to call on you to
provide justice for your workers.

Dr. King Jr. marched for justice for all! He called for an end to
poverty, and poverty wages. He spoke out for worker’s rights on and
off the job. He was jailed for fighting against discrimination.

Low wages, inadequate health care coverage, lack of right’s on the
job including retaliation for speaking out, among many other things,
are problems for all of us.

Surely, the multi-billion dollar Walmart corporation can do better!

We ask you to seriously take up the demands of OUR Walmart, your very
own workers, and hear their voices.

“An injury to one, is an injury to all.”
__________________________________________________



Protect the Social Safety Net, Create Jobs, Raise Revenue
Dear Cindy ,

Join Us on Capitol Hill PDA and our allies will again be visiting Senators with a progressive message:

First, no more "hostage taking" re: the Debt Ceiling. President Obama is right to refuse to negotiate over paying the nation's bills. The debt ceiling has been raised dozens of times in the past, including 18 times by Ronald Reagan. You should support a clean increase of the debt ceiling.

Second, we insist that our members of Congress resolve to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits by refusing to vote for any deal that weakens these programs. Medicare provides health care for 40 million American seniors and more than 8 million Americans with disabilities at a fraction of the cost of private insurance. Social Security adds nothing to the deficit or debt. Medicare provides life-giving care to millions of Americans, supports teaching hospital and other essential services. Cutting benefits and raising the retirement age would shift costs onto our seniors and increase costs on our society by over $11 trillion. We firmly oppose devastating families under the guise of deficit reduction.

Third, we demand a balanced approach in budget policies. With over $1.7 trillion already cut from programs for American families and less than half of that amount in new revenue, we need a more balanced, effective approach. Any additional debt and deficit reduction must come from new revenue, and from deep cuts to Pentagon and other waste--not public sector programs that support the elderly, the poor, working families or the middle class. We could save over $110 billion by eliminating subsidies to oil and gas companies. The Inclusive Prosperity Act would raise hundreds of billions dollars by taxing Wall Street speculation. Allowing negotiation of drug prices under Medicare Part D would save more than $150 billion.


Fourth, we have a jobs crisis, not a deficit crisis. You should support prospective legislation to make federal investments in direct job creation.

WHAT: Educate Our Senators
WHEN: 10 am
WHERE: Dirksen Senate Cafeteria (basement)
RSVP to join us


In solidarity,


Andrea, Stephen and Mike
PDA Maryland and PDA Virginia


_____________________________________________________



Dear Cindy,

On Monday, January 21st, Barack Obama will be sworn in to office for his second term.

Like many across the country, we are disappointed with what feels like the broken promises and unfilled dreams of the first Obama administration. From fighting climate change, to working towards immigration justice, to curtailing the war on terrorism, many of the promises that got Obama elected in 2008 have fallen flat. This week's featured article offers a comprehensive overview of Obama's first term and the impacts of his unkept promises.

There are many rallies, marches, and demostrations planned this weekend geared toward telling Obama that we still expect the best from him in his second term. The Peace Center has compiled a list of the events we thought you might be interested. You can find it here.

If you'd like to join the Peace Center this weekend amidst the wide array of events, you can join us at the Arc of Justice Parade on Monday at 9:30 am at Malcolm X Park. If you're interested in marching with us, please email dany@washingtonpeacecenter.org for more details.

In Solidarity,

Dany, Sonia, Carmen & Monisola
__________________________________________________

0 Comments

January 18th, 2013

1/18/2013

0 Comments

 
THIS ATTACK ON LABOR IS NOT ONLY AT THE BOTTOM WAGE SCALE......IT IS HITTING THE MIDDLE-CLASS HARD. 

We have political pundits who are all 'centrists' that hold all of mainstream media....EJ Dionne and David Brooks for example as public media's voice for all things political.  These two are both Brookings Institution, free-trade corporate globalists who will not speak ill of corporations in any way and they represent 'democrats' and 'republican' view......AND THEY BELIEVE THE SAME THING. So when Brooks constantly tells his audience that what is happening isn't class-warfare but simply inequity caused by education status, he is lying to you and I.  These labor protests always seem to be about the lower-class because those protests make the news and higher professionals are fearful of being public even as these wage and benefit cuts move them closer to lower-class.  Teachers and academic professors, firefighters, postal workers, health industry workers have many people working for them who have degrees....some many degrees....and they are watching their quality of life disappear.  This impoverishment is hitting every labor sector and it is all driven by the consolidation of US business sector into the hands of a few people who are making billions in profits as we sink further in earnings.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!

We hear over and again that it is about US businesses remaining 'COMPETITIVE' and we must have 'FREE-MARKETS' when in actuality they are working to end all of these things with hostile takeovers, capturing market share, and price-fixing at high levels to soak the consumer.  NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE FREE MARKET OR COMPETITIVE.  THEY CERTAINLY ARE NOT DEMOCRATIC.  So high unemployment was deliberately created with this massive collapse of the economy......they all knew the collapse was coming years before it happened as they worked to make it as deep as possible.  They are working to keep it with the Fed policy and the consolidation of businesses that will control all hiring.  Mom and Pop are even being stomped out of this economy.  THIS IS WHAT BROOKINGS INSTITUTE CALLS THE 'NEW ECONOMY'.

Below you will see the nurses unions on the street as these corporate execs squeeze a typically middle-class employment sector for all the profits it can.  This is important because it is health care that is identified as a leading growth industry.  We are told the other major growth industry, technology, will not create jobs as the number of people hired by that industry is a drop in the bucket.  THIS HIRING SITUATION WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING IF WE STILL HAD REGIONAL BUSINESSES WITH A DIVERSIFIED OWNERSHIP AND LAWS THAT PROTECTED AND NURTURED COMPETITION.....IT IS A PRODUCT OF THIRD WAY CORPORATE POLITICIANS AND THEIR GLOBAL MARKET POLICY.  The US is stagnant as these corporations grow in leaps and bounds overseas.  The businesses that come back to the US do so with the intent of having third world wages.

We can reverse this by simply demanding Rule of Law be reinstated and all of those trillions in corporate fraud is brought back to the US economy.  It is impossible with these Third Way corporate pols but we can RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES NEXT ELECTIONS!!!!

DO YOU HEAR YOUR LABOR LEADERS CHOOSING CANDIDATES TO RUN AT EVERY LEVEL?  DO YOU HAVE CANDIDATES CHOSEN FROM YOUR JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS?  IF NOT, YOUR LEADERS ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!!!!!!

MAKE YOUR NEW JOB TITLE 'POLITICIAN' AND DON'T SELL THE PEOPLE OUT!!


Nurses are strong on union support for their members and for the general public health benefits!!! THANK YOU NURSES UNION FOR SHOUTING AGAINST DECLINING WAGES AND BENEFITS IN WHAT WILL BE ONE OF THE FEW GROWTH INDUSTRIES.  Below is a call to arms from one medical community that mirrors all in this country:

This weekend, dozens of nurses from Steward Quincy Medical Center were out in their community meeting with the public and distributing leaflets detailing their serious concerns about unsafe staffing conditions at the facility and their need for improvements in these conditions to ensure quality patient care. Nurses were at local shopping centers, T stations and other highly trafficked locations, where they received a very positive response from the public, handing out thousands of leaflets. Below is the text from the leaflet:

A Message to Our Community from the Nurses at Steward Quincy Medical Center

For nurses, working in a hospital is more than just a job. It comes with a sacred duty to our patients to provide the best care possible. That includes the duty to speak out when we believe our patients' well being may be at risk. We are so severely under-staffed at Quincy Medical Center that nurses believe this is the time for us to speak out:

• Registered nurse staffing at Quincy Medical Center is at a bare bones level, forcing nurses to care for too many patients at one time, which may compromise our ability to provide safe patient care.

• At the same time, there is not enough non-RN technical and support staff to provide the care our patients deserve.

• RNs have submitted more than 125 official written reports of unsafe staffing incidents to management in 2012.

• Our community hospital is now owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a multi-billion dollar private equity investment firm. Health care staffing decisions are now being made at the corporate level driven by the profit motive, and not at the local level based on the needs of our patients and community.

• There is no medical justification for this level of staffing. In fact, the only reason management has provided is that staffing costs money.

This is our community hospital. We are proud to be RNs at Quincy Medical Center and we are committed to its future success. We ask for your support to ensure that you and all our families receive the safe, quality care patients deserve.

Call Quincy Medical Center at 617- 773-6100 x4012 or email Daniel.Knell@steward.org and tell him to listen to his own staff! No hospital can ethically increase its profit by putting patients at risk by failing to provide enough staff.

______________________________________________
THESE STANDARDIZED TESTS ARE NOT ABOUT QUALITY EDUCATION...THEY ARE ABOUT MEASURING PERFORMANCE FOR WHAT IS TO BE AN AUTOCRATIC EDUCATION SYSTEM DESIGNED FROM THE CHINESE SCHOOL SYSTEM.  IT IS ABOUT TRACKING STUDENTS AND ABOUT MAKING SURE EDUCATORS PROVIDE ONLY THE INFORMATION DICTATED BY THESE COMMON CORE AND ONLINE REGISTERED LECTURES.

THERE IS NOT SO MUCH A PROBLEM IN STANDARDIZING HARD SCIENCES WHERE MATH AND SCIENCE HAVE DEFINITIVE LAWS....BUT THIS IS REACHING ALL LEVELS OF EDUCATION HUMANITIES AND LIBERAL ARTS THAT THRIVE BY DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT.

Standardized test backlash: Some Seattle teachers just say 'no' Resistance to standardized tests has been simmering for years, but now a group of Seattle teachers is in open revolt. No longer will they administer the tests, they say, citing a waste of public resources.

By Dean Paton, Correspondent / January 11, 2013  Christian Science Monitor


Students walk out of the lunchroom past a poster urging preparing for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessments System (MCAS) tests, in this March 1999 file photo. Massachusetts students who don't pass the test don't graduate.

John Nordell/Staff/File



Forty-five minutes after school let out Thursday afternoon, 19 teachers here at Seattle's Garfield High School worked their way to the front of an already-crowded classroom, then turned, leaned their backs against the wall of whiteboards, and fired the first salvo of open defiance against high-stakes standardized testing in America's public schools.

To a room full of TV cameras, reporters, students, and colleagues, the teachers announced their refusal to administer a standardized test that ninth-graders across the district are mandated to take in the first part of January. Known as the MAP test – for Measures of Academic Progress – it is intended to evaluate student progress and skill in reading and math.

First one teacher, then another, and then more stepped forward to charge that the test wastes time, money, and dwindling school resources. It is also used to evaluate teacher quality.

“Our teachers have come together and agreed that the MAP test is not good for our students, nor is it an appropriate or useful tool in measuring progress,” said Kris McBride, academic dean and testing coordinator at Garfield High. “Additionally, students don’t take it seriously. It produces specious results and wreaks havoc on limited school resources during the weeks and weeks the test is administered.”

RECOMMENDED: Are you as well read as the average 10th grader?

Garfield’s civil yet disobedient faculty appears to be the first group of teachers nationally to defy district edicts concerning a standardized test, but the backlash against high-stakes testing has been percolating in other parts of the country.

  • The New York State Principals association recently issued a scathing letter, nearly four pages of “unintended negative consequences” it claims such tests foment.
  • In Maryland, Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr has called for a three-year moratorium on standardized testing.
  • In north Texas last year, superintendents of several high-performing school districts signed a letter to state officials and lawmakers saying high-stakes standardized testing is “strangling our public schools.” As of Jan. 8, 880 districts that educate more than 4.4 million Texas students have adopted a resolution opposing these tests. 
“This high-stakes testing – there needs to be a moratorium on it, because it’s out of control,” says Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, Long Island, N.Y. “None of these tests really have anything to do with curriculum. Maybe they have a little bit to do with math. But that’s it.”

Dr. Burris co-authored the letter for the New York State principals. On Dec. 31, she started a petition in New York opposing high-stakes testing. In 10 days, she says, 5,500 administrators, teachers, and parents have signed it.

“Parents are stressed. Teachers are stressed. Kids are stressed by these tests more than parents,” Burris says. “And when you tie teachers’ evaluations to these tests, the teachers end up focusing their lessons on the tests. And that’s starting to destroy elementary education.”
__________________________________________________
I WANT TO INCLUDE THIS AGAIN TO EMPHASIZE THAT IT IS THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATS WHO ARE WORKING AS HARD AS REPUBLICANS TO SHRINK UNIONS.  THE PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS ARE THE LAST STRONGHOLD FOR UNIONIZING AND AS SUCH IT IS IMPORTANT TO FIGHT TO KEEP THEM STRONG AS THEY HELP STRENGTHEN PRIVATE SECTOR UNIONS.

BELOW YOU SEE WHERE O'MALLEY NEGOTIATED A DEAL THAT HE KNEW WOULD LEAD TO THE MTA EMPLOYEES WHO WERE UNIONIZED IN STATE UNIONS BEING SLOWLY IMPOVERISHED AND NOW FIRED AS UNION MEMBERS WITH THE OFFER OF REHIRE AS NON-UNION DOING THE SAME JOB.

THIS IS DELIBERATE UNION-BUSTING!!!

MY COMMENTS TO THE ARTICLE BELOW:

The key word here is other contractor.  This is our public transportation system and we do not want any of it to fall to private contractors because, as you see, there is no stability for the employees attached to these contractors.....which is the point says Mayor Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Council.  These are employees that should be working for the MTA making a middle-class salary with strong public sector benefits.  What Baltimore politicians are doing is privatizing public transportation a little at a time and throwing these employees into a private hiring situation that impoverishes them, takes their benefits, and now we see they are losing their jobs and seniority.  When Veola took jobs from the MTA there were contract protections for the workers.  The idea was that the employees would remain unionized just as they were with MTA but, as is the plan with all these public-private partnerships, they are brought down to poverty and then if unionized, a reason is found to dismiss.  Now, when/if these employees are rehired or moved to yet another private contractor will they be unionized?  You can bet that won't happen in Baltimore with this City Council and mayor.....they seek to make you as poor as possible!!


Veolia Transportation warns that it will lay off 78 Most could be hired by a competitor, company tells state
By Jamie Smith Hopkins, The Baltimore Sun 1:02 p.m. EST, January 15, 2013

Veolia Transportation warned state officials that it will be laying off 78 employees in Baltimore as it stops servicing a portion of an unspecified contract, but added that most could be hired by the new contractor.

The cuts are expected March 3.

Veolia's notice to the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said the workers are based at a Huntingdon Ave. location. Veolia's services in Baltimore include paratransit.

State labor officials said the company hopes that employees who don't switch to the new contractor will find other jobs at Veolia. The company is based in Illinois and has operations across the country.

jhopkins@baltsun.com



0 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

    Archives

    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012

    Categories

    All
    2014 Economic Crash
    21st Century Economy
    Affordable Care Act
    Affordable Care Act
    Alec
    Americorp/VISTA
    Anthony Brown
    Anthony Brown
    Anti Incumbant
    Anti-incumbant
    Anti Incumbent
    Anti Incumbent
    Attacking The Post Office Union
    Baltimore And Cronyism
    Baltimore Board Of Estimates
    Baltimore Board Of Estimates
    Baltimore Development Corp
    Baltimore Development Corp
    Baltimore Recall/Retroactive Term Limits
    Bank Fraud
    Bank Fraud
    Bank Of America
    Bank Settlement
    Bank-settlement
    B Corporations
    Bgeexelon Mergerf59060c411
    Brookings Institution
    Business Tax Credits
    California Charter Expansion
    Cardin
    Career Colleges
    Career Colleges Replacing Union Apprenticeships
    Charters
    Charter School
    Collection Agencies
    Common Core
    Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
    Consumer-financial-protection-bureau
    Corporate Media
    Corporate-media
    Corporate Oversight
    Corporate-oversight
    Corporate Politicians
    Corporate-politicians
    Corporate Rule
    Corporate-rule
    Corporate Taxes
    Corporate-taxes
    Corporate Tax Reform
    Corporatizing Us Universities
    Cost-benefit-analysis
    Credit Crisis
    Credit-crisis
    Cummings
    Department Of Education
    Department Of Justice
    Department-of-justice
    Derivatives Reform
    Development
    Dismantling Public Justice
    Dodd Frank
    Doddfrankbba4ff090a
    Doug Gansler
    Doug-gansler
    Ebdi
    Education Funding
    Education Reform
    Edwards
    Election Reform
    Election-reform
    Elections
    Emigration
    Energy-sector-consolidation-in-maryland
    Enterprise Zones
    Equal Access
    Estate Taxes
    European Crisis
    Expanded And Improved Medicare For All
    Expanded-and-improved-medicare-for-all
    Failure To Prosecute
    Failure-to-prosecute
    Fair
    Fair And Balanced Elections
    Fair-and-balanced-elections
    Farm Bill
    Federal Election Commissionelection Violationsmaryland
    Federal Election Commissionelection Violationsmarylandd20a348918
    Federal-emergency-management-agency-fema
    Federal Reserve
    Financial Reform Bill
    Food Safety Not In Tpp
    For Profit Education
    Forprofit-education
    Fracking
    Fraud
    Freedom Of Press And Speech
    Frosh
    Gambling In Marylandbaltimore8dbce1f7d2
    Granting Agencies
    Greening Fraud
    Gun Control Policy
    Healthcare For All
    Healthcare-for-all
    Health Enterprise Zones
    High Speed Rail
    Hoyer
    Imf
    Immigration
    Incarceration Bubble
    Incumbent
    Incumbents
    Innovation Centers
    Insurance Industry Leverage And Fraud
    International Criminal Court
    International Trade Deals
    International-trade-deals
    Jack Young
    Jack-young
    Johns Hopkins
    Johns-hopkins
    Johns Hopkins Medical Systems
    Johns-hopkins-medical-systems
    Kaliope Parthemos
    Labor And Justice Law Under Attack
    Labor And Wages
    Lehmann Brothers
    Living Wageunionspolitical Action0e39f5c885
    Maggie McIntosh
    Maggie-mcintosh
    Martin O'Malley
    Martin O'Malley
    Martin-omalley
    Martin-omalley8ecd6b6eb0
    Maryland Health Co Ops
    Maryland-health-co-ops
    Maryland-health-co-ops1f77692967
    Maryland Health Coopsccd73554da
    Maryland Judiciary
    Marylandnonprofits
    Maryland Non Profits
    Maryland Nonprofits2509c2ca2c
    Maryland Public Service Commission
    Maryland State Bar Association
    Md Credit Bondleverage Debt441d7f3605
    Media
    Media Bias
    Media-bias
    Medicaremedicaid
    Medicaremedicaid8416fd8754
    Mental Health Issues
    Mental-health-issues
    Mers Fraud
    Mikulski
    Military Privatization
    Minority Unemploymentunion And Labor Wagebaltimore Board Of Estimates4acb15e7fa
    Municipal Debt Fraud
    Ndaa-indefinite-detention
    Ndaaindefinite Detentiond65cc4283d
    Net Neutrality
    New Economy
    New-economy
    Ngo
    Non Profit To Profit
    Nonprofit To Profitb2d6cb4b41
    Nsa
    O'Malley
    Odette Ramos
    Omalley
    O'Malley
    Open Meetings
    Osha
    Patronage
    Pension-benefit-guaranty-corp
    Pension Funds
    Pension-funds
    Police Abuse
    Private-and-public-pension-fraud
    Private Health Systemsentitlementsprofits Over People
    Private Health Systemsentitlementsprofits Over People6541f468ae
    Private Non Profits
    Private-non-profits
    Private Nonprofits50b33fd8c2
    Privatizing Education
    Privatizing Government Assets
    Privatizing-the-veterans-admin-va
    Privitizing Public Education
    Progressive Policy
    Progressive Taxes Replace Regressive Policy
    Protections Of The People
    Protections-of-the-people
    Public Education
    Public Funding Of Private Universities
    Public Housing Privatization
    Public-libraries-privatized-or-closed
    Public Private Partnerships
    Public-private-partnerships
    Public Transportation Privatization
    Public Utilities
    Rapid Bus Network
    Rawlings Blake
    Rawlings-blake
    Rawlingsblake1640055471
    Real Progressives
    Reit-real-estate-investment-trusts
    Reitreal Estate Investment Trustsa1a18ad402
    Repatriation Taxes
    Rule Of Law
    Rule-of-law
    Ruppersberger
    SAIC AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
    Sarbanes
    S Corp Taxes
    Selling Public Datapersonal Privacy
    Smart Meters
    Snowden
    Social Security
    Sovereign Debt Fraudsubprime Mortgage Fraudmortgage Fraud Settlement
    Sovereign Debt Fraudsubprime Mortgage Fraudmortgage Fraud Settlement0d62c56e69
    Statistics As Spin
    Statistics-as-spin
    Student-corps
    Subprime Mortgage Fraud
    Subprime-mortgage-fraud
    Surveillance And Security
    Sustainability
    Teachers
    Teachers Unions2bc448afc8
    Teach For America
    Teach For America
    Technology Parks
    Third Way Democrats/new Economy/public Union Employees/public Private Patnerships/government Fraud And Corruption
    Third Way Democratsnew Economypublic Union Employeespublic Private Patnershipsgovernment Fraud And Corruption
    Third-way-democratsnew-economypublic-union-employeespublic-private-patnershipsgovernment-fraud-and-corruptionc10a007aee
    Third Way/neo Liberals
    Third-wayneo-liberals
    Third-wayneo-liberals5e1e6d4716
    Third Wayneoliberals7286dda6aa
    Tifcorporate Tax Breaks2d87bba974
    Tpp
    Transportation Inequity In Maryland
    Union Busting
    Unionbusting0858fddb8b
    Unions
    Unionsthird Waypost Officealec3c887e7815
    Universities
    Unreliable Polling
    Unreliable-polling
    Van Hollen
    Van-hollen
    VEOLA Environment -privatization Of Public Water
    Veterans
    War Against Women And Children
    War-against-women-and-children
    Youth Works

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.