1. Bill List - Mental Health Association of Maryland
   
2. www.mhamd.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2017-MHAMD-Bill-List-Final.pdf Apr 11, 2017 ... Education – Specialized. Intervention Services -. Reports. Requires county school boards to report on the number of K-12 students receiving ...

Please goggle this BILL LIST to see the Maryland Assembly bills tied to health and education as regards mental health.



Today let's look at the very first Senate bill 1 again HEALTH AND EDUCATION COMMITTEE this time pertaining to SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS in K-3.  If we read this bill we might think our Maryland Assembly cares about students with disabilities.  Maryland being far-right global Wall Street has these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA allowed the worst of conditions for all Federal Education Title 8 rights----including special education students. Now, some counties may handle the funding they receive from this Federal program differently----there may be counties in Maryland that do the right thing and invest that Federal funding into strong programs for our special needs students----Baltimore City for one does not and the State of Maryland has over 3 decades allowed this failure to stand.  Federal funding for special needs in Baltimore as with public K-12 funds in general were largely lost to misappropriation, fraud, and corruption.  Parents of special needs in Baltimore have shouted these same decades about the failure to meet standards -----a transference of control of Baltimore City School Board to the STATE was predicated on these special needs failures 3 decades ago under the guise of the state correcting failures and VOILA----special needs in Baltimore is worse than 3 decades ago.  In fact all in-school staff once charged with being those support staff have systematically been fired---down-sized---outsourced making matters worse.

This is not to say a Montgomery County does not use its Federal special needs and Title 8 funding as it should----we have not looked into that school system.  The point is this:  Race to the Top along with changes in PER PUPIL FUNDING FOR SPECIAL NEEDS STUDENTS lowered funding for these students and they are systematically being tracked into low-performing schools. 

SENATE BILL 1(A) IN THIS SECTION, “SPECIALIZED INTERVENTION SERVICES” MEANS 1 SERVICES PROVIDED TO STUDENTS IN KINDERGARTEN THROUGH GRADE  3 WHO:
(1) ARE NOT CURRENTLY IDENTIFIED AS NEEDING SPECIAL
EDUCATION OR RELATED SERVICES UNDER TITLE 8, SUBTITLE OF THIS ARTICLE;

So, when we get yet another education policy geared towards special needs students-----we are SKEPTICAL


EXPLANATION: CAPITALS INDICATE MATTER ADDED TO EXISTING LAW.  
  [Brackets]
indicate matter deleted from existing law.
Underlining
indicates amendments to bill.
Strike out
indicates matter stricken from the bill by amendment or deleted from the law by
amendment.


*sb0001*
SENATE BILL 1
F1
7lr0396
(PRE
–
FILED)
By:
Senator Conway
Senators Conway, Madaleno, Lee, Zucker, and Smith
Requested: June 29, 2016
Introduced and read
first time: January 11, 2017


Assigned to: Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs
Committee Report: Favorable with amendments
Senate action: Adopted
Read second time: February 13, 2017



CHAPTER ______
AN ACT concerning
1
Education
–
Specialized
Intervention Services
–
Reports
2
FOR the purpose of requiring certain county boards of education to report certain
3
information relating to the provision of specialized intervention services to the State
4
Department of Education and the General Assembly on
or before a certain date each
5
year;
requiring the State Department of Education to establish certain guidelines;
6
requiring certain county boards and the Department to publish annually certain
7
information on certain Web sites; defining a certain term; and
generally relating to
8
the reporting of specialized intervention services.
9
BY adding to
10
Article
–
Education
11
Section 5
–
111.1
12
Annotated Code of Maryland
13
(2014 Replacement Volume and 2016 Supplement)

______________________________________

One of the first things we see is ------the bill states these policies do not apply to special needs children ---a category called 'Specialized
Intervention Services' seems to differentiate between special needs and students having other classroom challenges. This article sounds a request by parents of special needs for improvements---this bill looks to do the opposite.

The article clearly identifies students with disabilities-----

'The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is important for students with disabilities.  It holds substantial promise for students in need of early intervention'.

And here is that Senate Bill 1-----clearly stating these policies do not pertain to students identified as needing special education.  Again. our Maryland and Baltimore media will only place this bill's title in a media headline and it looks like the assembly is addressing the concerns of parents with special needs children.

FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL WALL STREET CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS PRETENDING TO THROW LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE BONES HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR THESE FEW DECADES WHILE RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS.


SENATE BILL 1(A) IN THIS SECTION, “SPECIALIZED INTERVENTION SERVICES” MEANS 1 SERVICES PROVIDED TO STUDENTS IN KINDERGARTEN THROUGH GRADE  3 WHO:
(1) ARE NOT CURRENTLY IDENTIFIED AS NEEDING SPECIAL
EDUCATION OR RELATED SERVICES UNDER TITLE 8, SUBTITLE OF THIS ARTICLE;


How Maryland legislators can fix a problem one mother found with special education

By Valerie Strauss March 2

A therapist works with a child with autism doing ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) therapy. The photo chart and pictures are all my own (I make therapy materials for special needs kids). The exercise done here helps a child identify and manage emotions.I recently wrote a post about Katherine Spurlock, a former public school teacher who moved to Montgomery County, Md., from a tiny school district in New York and discovered shocking about special education.

Spurlock wanted to make sure that her daughter, who has dyslexia, received appropriate interventions and placement in school but learned that Montgomery County — nor any other county in Maryland and perhaps across the United States — did not compile  data about how much money was being spent on early academic or behavioral interventions for students who need them.

Why does this matter? As I wrote in the earlier post, research shows that early interventions — from kindergarten through third grade — can help alleviate learning disabilities and improve student outcomes. The Maryland Special Education Census Data 2014-2015 showed that a large number of students in special education receive referrals after the K-3 period has passed -- and that data suggests that by the time students with learning disabilities are referred for special-education services, wide achievement gaps already exist. But there isn’t a systematic way for a state to know who is doing what with specialized interventions for young children — even though federal law says schools must have intervention programs.


Spurlock persuaded some Maryland state legislators to introduce legislation requiring boards of education to annually report data on specialized intervention services to the State Department of Education and the General Assembly. Here’s a piece she wrote about where that legislation is headed and why it matters so much.

By Katherine Spurlock
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is important for students with disabilities.  It holds substantial promise for students in need of early intervention.

About half the students in special education have severe disabilities such as blindness, deafness, Down Syndrome, mental retardation, and other disabilities evident at birth or early in development. When these students receive effective intervention, their outcomes are better, but it wasn’t a lack of early intervention that created the disability they live with.

For about half the students in the United States served by special education, the situation is murkier.  They have mild or late appearing disabilities — often affecting learning and attention — that schools identify in later elementary school or even in middle or high school.  Part nature and part nurture, these learning problems can be curbed through early intervention.
But this means stark disparities exist between the children of the haves—who can better get intervention both inside and outside the schools—and the have nots.  Further, it’s not fanciful to say that a lack of effective early intervention creates many of the learning, attention, and emotional disabilities we see down the road.

Starting with the reauthorization of IDEA in 2004, federal law took the view that schools are accountable for disparities by mandating that schools have early-intervention programs in order to avoid racial disproportionality in special education, evident when more poor children are consigned to the special education classroom rather than the general education classroom.

IDEA 2004 made clear that it wasn’t only racism and cultural bias that were to blame for the over-representation of minorities in more restrictive learning environments, but the lack of effective early intervention.  Schools with significant over-representation were required to re-direct federal funding that supports special education to prevention in the form of early intervention programs focusing primarily on kindergarten through third grade.


But IDEA, while mandating early intervention, does not demand the data reporting that would provide real accountability.  This is a real problem, because sanctioning schools for over-representation creates a perverse incentive for schools to delay referring children of color for special education services.  The law designed to promote early intervention can in some cases have the opposite impact. If minority students are not significantly over-represented in schools in categories like learning disabilities because they have received quality intervention that’s a good thing.  But if the needs of minority children are more likely to be ignored, that is not a good thing at all.

____________________________________

Here we see what Bill 1 addresses-----it is mental health and we are not surprised that an affluent county like Montgomery County would OPPOSE THIS while supporting the work group. 

If we read the bill again ---the synopsis------we see what most statutes coming from our state assembly say-----CERTAIN THIS----CERTAIN THAT------CERTAIN OVER THERE.  These statutes are targeted ----not held to all citizens in Maryland.  In this case this reporting on how much is spent and how for each child will only be required of children with mental health issues and indeed it will hit urban children of low-income---and rural children of low-income.  Targeting a select group of citizens for reporting ----from grades K-3---while these children are already being tracked into lower-performing schools COMPOUNDS the inequity for these children.

WE WANT TO SAY TO MARYLAND ACLU WHICH ALWAYS LEADS IN PROMOTING THE WORST OF UNJUST EDUCATION POLICIES----YOU ARE AGAIN ON THE WRONG SIDE OF CIVIL LIBERTIES.




Montgomery County Public Schools, 850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville, Maryland 20850
Senate BillsSenate Bill 1 
Education - Specialized Intervention Services – Reports
Senator Conway
Oppose (but support workgroup)



We are MOVING FORWARD to such a degree of 'specialization' of education with all kinds of for-profit schools having these programs that any kind of equal rights, equal opportunity and access, and rights for our disabled----remember, children with behavior that may not be main stream are not necessarily mentally ill.



OnTrack Maryland

What is the OnTrack Maryland Program?

OnTrack


Maryland, a program for young adults offered at Family Services, Inc., offers specialized programs for the early identification, evaluation, and treatment of adolescents and young adults who have started experiencing certain troubling thoughts and/or experiences, or exhibiting changes in behavior, such as:

• Hearing or seeing things that others do not see or hear
• Having unusual thoughts or beliefs that appear as strange to themselves or others
• Feeling fearful or suspicious of others, sometimes including others they usually trust

We use an integrated approach to address educational, employment, physical and mental needs of young adults, including providing support for managing concerns with substance abuse.  We are committed to equipping individuals at risk for more serious mental health difficulties and their families with tools to manage these troubling thoughts and/or experiences, achieve their goals for school, work, and relationships, and establish a life of their choosing.



Who does OnTrack Maryland serve?

• Individuals (ages 15-30) who gave recently started having strange and unusual thoughts and/or experiences.
• Family members, friends, educators, and others interested in understanding more about what these experiences might mean, and learning how to help individuals connect with appropriate help.

What services are available?

OnTrack Maryland provides evidence-based interventions for youth with early psychosis, including:

• Care based on model of mental health recovery that takes into account the treatment preferences and goals of young people and their families;
• Psycho-education about early psychosis for young people and families;

• Prescription and management of recommended pharmacological treatments;
  
  
• Supported employment and education for helping young people re-engage in work, school or pursuing new educational and/or work opportunities;
  
  
• Behavioral interventions to improve social functioning and reduce substance use;
  
  
• Assisting young people and families in times of acute need;
  
  
• Connecting young people and their families to resources and other support services in their communities.

________________________________________


We encourage all citizens to keep an eye on this dismantling of all Federal Education Titles and what will be the same defunding-----services becoming worse to harmful-----because that is to where RACE TO THE TOP takes our special needs students and believe global Wall Street does not take time for children with behavioral/emotional issues---they will track those challenged right out of any school system and into workshops.

Baltimore is a city that hates public education and it does not think left social progressive public health exists.


Top Ten Most Ridiculous Comments Heard at an IEP Meeting

By Dennise Goldberg


In my job as a special education advocate, and my other job as a parent of a child with special needs, I have been involved in too many Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings to count.  During these numerous IEP meetings I have met some wonderful, caring, knowledgeable, well meaning Teachers and School Personnel.


I have also, at times, heard some of the most outrageous statements!!!  These ridiculous comments fly in the face of everything the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) stands for.  What you will find below are ten of most ridiculous statements that I have heard and why they are so ridiculous.


Ridiculous Statement #1

Your child’s emotional disturbance is interfering with her academic performance so she doesn’t qualify for an IEP.


Fact:  There are 13 disability categories under IDEA.  In order to qualify for an IEP you must meet the definition of one of the 13 categories and by reason thereof NEED special education and related services.  One of the 13 disability categories is emotional disturbance and if that disability is interfering with the child’s ability to access the curriculum then by definition she has a need for an IEP.


Ridiculous Statement #2

This is a Magnet School we don’t do IEP’s here.


Fact: All public schools are required, by law, to provide children with a disability a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE).  Since magnet schools are public schools they are required to execute IEP’s for those children that require special education.  This would also go for advanced study schools and charter schools.


Ridiculous Statement #3

We don’t perform Functional Behavior Assessments (FBA) or write Behavior Support Plans (BSP) for Children exhibiting off-task behavior.  FBA’s are only for kids that are not nice.



Fact:  IDEA requires the IEP Team to consider five special factors when writing an IEP.  One of those five special factors is behavior.  It states:  (i) In the case of a child whose behavior impedes the child’s learning or that of others, consider the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports, and other strategies, to address that behavior.  Behavior that impedes learning comes in many forms and does not always manifest itself in violent outbursts.  Off-task behavior can and does impede learning.


Ridiculous Statement #4

Maybe your daughter’s behavior issues are being caused by you telling her she has autism and she is emulating how she thinks someone with autism should act.  I suggest not talking with her so much about her autism.


Fact: Wow, I’m still amazed at this one and I’m not sure where to start.  Let’s focus on the fact that they are blaming the parent for the child’s behavior in school.  If the School really believes the IEP isn’t working because of the parent they are required to provide training to the parent via the related service, parent training and counseling.  In my opinion, the School needs the training not the parent but let’s move on.:)


Ridiculous Statement #5

We can’t test your child for an IEP until we have first tried Response to Intervention.


Fact: This ridiculous statement was used by so many School Districts that on January 21, 2011 the United States Department of Education Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services issued a memo reminding School Districts that Response to Intervention cannot be used to delay-deny an evaluation for eligibility under IDEA.   You can download the memo here: OSERS Memo on RTI Office of Special Education


Ridiculous Statement #6

Your child will be graduating at the end of the month whether you like it or not.


Fact: Graduation with a diploma is considered a change of placement under an IEP.  Any change of placement triggers extensive due process rights.  If the parents disagree with their child (who has not reached the age of majority) graduating they can stop it by filing for due process.  This would trigger a Stay Put.  Stay Put means there can be no change of placement or reduction of services while the disagreement is being worked out.


Ridiculous Statement #7

I won’t let you add your comments to the parental concerns section of the IEP form because the IEP is a School document and I disagree with your description of the events that occurred.


Fact: This question has been responded to in the United States Federal Register where it was said, “Parents are free to provide input into their child’s IEP through a written report if they so choose.”


Ridiculous Statement #8

I spoke to my supervisor at the School District and she has authorized me to offer you one hour of speech therapy a week.


Fact: IDEA specifically says that all decisions regarding an IEP need to be decided in an IEP Team meeting.  If a faceless supervisor is making the decision regarding the IEP outside of the team meeting then this is called predetermination.  That supervisor would need to join the IEP Team and discuss her recommendations with the Team before any decisions could be made.


Ridiculous Statement #9

 I agree she needs a full-time aide but I don’t have the authority to authorize that.


Fact: IDEA requires every IEP Team to have a District Representative that is knowledgeable about the District’s curriculum and resources that has the authority to bind the District.


Ridiculous Statement #10 Your child is too smart to have an IEP.


Fact:  Intelligence has no bearing on disability or need.  Even individuals with genius level IQs can have a disability that affects their ability to access the curriculum.


Dennise Goldberg is the owner of Special Education Advisor a community of parents, educators, and special education service providers dedicated to helping families with children who have special needs understand their special education rights and receive appropriate special education services.

Dennise works with children with all forms of disabilities including autism, cerebral palsy, aspergers, and down syndrome, to name a few. She is also the mother of a beautiful 10-year old boy who has dealt with developmental delays, apraxia of speech, fine motor delays, sensory issues, gross motor delays, and now has a learning disability (auditory processing disorder).
_________________________________________


This school system uses this education corporation, this school system uses that education testing corporation each having testing and education data that follows our children through LITERALLY---LIFE.

The only real testing we need is for SOCIOPATHY---LET'S GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS BY REQUIRING AN ANNUAL MENTAL HEALTH TESTING.

'Brigance Testing covers a variety of school based curriculum topics through a series of 12 assessments, including language development, science and math proficiencies and gross motor skills'.

Baltimore is heading for the worst of K-career for-profit global education corporation structures and policies-----each pol in office runs as a Democrat----serves as a far-right wing global Wall Street with the most repressive---regressive public policy especially in EDUCATION =====



Last edited Feb 27, 2017 @ 10:01 pm


What is Brigance Testing?

Brigance is a screening tool widely used by schools for students in Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten and First Grade. The test is not an IQ test nor is it a full scale educational assessment – it is a norm referenced test that compares each child’s results with the performance of other examinees. Brigance Testing covers a variety of school based curriculum topics through a series of 12 assessments, including language development, science and math proficiencies and gross motor skills.

• 1 Who administers the test?
• 2 How is the test scored?
• 3 Why do schools use Brigance Testing?
• 4 Do all schools use Brigance Testing?
  • 4.1 Related

Who administers the test?



The test is administered in a one-on-one setting and takes approximately 15 minutes. In many schools the test can be done by the reading specialist, the classroom teacher, or school psychologist.


How is the test scored?The test is scored by the test administrator in 3 steps. First, the administrator scores each of the 12 assessment areas individually. They do this by multiplying the total correct answers for that section by a specific point value per question. Each section has questions weighed at a different amount based on the skill level required and age of testing. For example, a Kindergartener will only get ½ point for each uppercase letter named correctly but gets 3 points for each correct question related to number readiness. Second, after they have determined the child’s scores for each section they compile the results. The test is based on a total score of 100 points.  Third, the total score is compared to a national average scale to indicate if the student is above, below, or of average ability level.


Why do schools use Brigance Testing?

Many schools use this screening tool to identify incoming students who may be at risk for learning difficulties and who might benefit from intervention. Likewise, the test has the capability to indicate a child who may be above average and thus provide the support necessary for a more enriching learning experience.


Do all schools use Brigance Testing?

No, they do not. The use of Brigance Testing is subject to the administrative decisions of each school and school district’s procedures when screening incoming Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, and First Grade students.


By Danielle Meyer, Reading Specialist

We want to spend this week discussing legislation passing through Maryland Assembly.  First we need to note this----Maryland is one of a few states having a legislative period of only 3 MONTHS.

Maryland has kept its assembly sessions at the same 3 months for centuries back when a session may have had a few hundred bills.  Look today to see our 2017 Maryland Assembly session with 1200 bills all done in 3 months.  Needless to say----there is no time to discuss beyond a cursory superficial way------there is no time for Maryland citizens to have time to bring input-----almost all session public voice comes from global Wall Street non-profit leaders.  If you are a citizen with a voice NOT GLOBAL WALL STREET you will find these committee chairs coming up with all kinds of reasons for you not to have time to speak.  Left social progressive voices are silenced in general session public meetings while CAMERAS ARE SHOWING THAT COMMITTEE MEETING.

Needless to say--------these bills are rammed through a crony process and there is so many bills made public in so short of time----the general public has NO TIME to organize fight ---no way to know that a bill pages long sounding social progressive with very, very, very, very bad global Wall Street policies buried inside.

Maryland has always been global Wall Street----making the rich extremely richer but this format----3 month sessions with tons of bills are now coming to US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones.  This is how global Wall STreet pols pass all that policy for MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE while most people are watching Trump on CNN.


Legislative Session Length

12/2/2010
Table of Contents

• Legislative Session Length

Contact

• Jonathan Griffin

Legislative session length may be unrestricted, or it may be limited. Session length limitations are set in a variety of ways. The limits may be found in constitution, statute or chamber rule. They also may set indirectly by restricting the number of days for which a legislator receives compensation, per diem or mileage reimbursement.


In the early 1960s, 17 states did not place restrictions on the length of their legislative sessions. In another 10 states, the limits were indirect. Several states increased their session length. These were Colorado (from 120 to 160); Georgia (from 80 to 85); Kansas (from 90 to 120); Minnesota (from 90 to 120); and South Dakota (from 60 to 75).


Throughout the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, session limitations became more defined. Fewer states had unrestricted sessions, and the number of states with indirect session limits declined.

REAGAN/CLINTON ERA----


Since the late 1980s, several session lengths were shortened.  Colorado's session was cut to 120 days in 1988. In 1992, Louisiana changed its constitution to shorten and limit the scope of its even-year session. In 1998, the citizens of Nevada adopted a constitutional amendment that restricts the legislative session to 120 days. In 2002, an amendment to the Louisiana Constitution changed the timing of its general and fiscal sessions and adjusted the length of the fiscal session; the changes went into effect January 2004.  In 2006, Alaska voters passed an initiative establishing a 90 day session in statute, which took effect in 2008.


In November 2008, however, South Dakota voters approved a constitutional amendment that lengthened legislative sessions. The amendment equalized the length of session at 40 legislative days each year. Previously, session length was 40 legislative days in odd-numbered years, and 35 legislative days in even-numbered years.

Currently, only 11 states do not place a limit on the length of regular session. In the remaining 39, the limits are set by constitution, statute, chamber rule or indirect method.



Legislative Session

LengthStateCurrent Session Length Limit

Method of Setting


Alabama30 L in 105 CStatute

Alaska
90 C
Statute

Arizona

Sat of week in which 100th C falls
Chamber rule

Arkansas
Odd-60 C
Even-30 C
Constitution

California
Odd-None
Even-Nov 30
Odd-Sept 12
Even-Aug 31
Constitution




Chamber Rule

Colorado
120 C
Constitution

Connecticut
Odd-Wed after 1st Mon in June
Even- Wed after 1st Mon in May 
Constitution

Delaware
June 30
Constitution

Florida
60 C
Constitution

Georgia
40 L
Constitution

Hawaii
60 L
Constitution

Idaho
None
Not applicable

Illinois
None
Not applicable

Indiana
Odd-Apr 29
Even-Mar 14
Statute

Iowa
Odd-110 C
Even-100 C
Indirect

Kansas
Odd-None
Even-90 C
Constitution

Kentucky
Odd: 30 L or Mar 30
Even:60 L or Apr 15
Constitution

Louisiana
Odd-45 L in 60 C
Even-60 L in 85 C
Constitution

Maine
Odd-3rd Wed in June
Even-3rd Wed in Apr 
Statute

Maryland
90 C
Constitution

Massachusetts
Formal sessions:
Odd-3rd Wed in November
Even-July 31 
Informal sessions: None
Chamber rule

Michigan
None
Not applicable

Minnesota
120 L total within biennium or 1st Mon after 3rd Sat in May each year
Constitution

Mississippi
90 C except year after gubernatorial election,
then 125 C
Constitution

Missouri
May 30
Constitution

Montana
Biennial session; 90 L
Constitution

Nebraska
Odd-90 L
Even-60 L
Constitution

Nevada
Biennial session ; 120 C
Constitution

New Hampshire
45 L or July 1
Indirect

New Jersey
None
Not applicable

New Mexico
Odd-60 C
Even-30 C
Constitution

New York
None
Not applicable

North Carolina
None
Not applicable

North Dakota
Biennial session ; 80 L
Constitution

Ohio
None
Not applicable

Oklahoma
Last Fri in May
Constitution

Oregon
Odd-160C
Even-35C
Constitution

Pennsylvania
None
Not applicable

Rhode Island
None
Not applicable

South Carolina
1st Thurs in June


Statute

South Dakota
40 L
Constitution

Tennessee
90 L
Indirect

Texas
Biennial session ; 140 C
Constitution

Utah
45 C
Constitution

Vermont
None



Virginia
Odd-30 C
Even-60 C
Constitution

Washington
Odd-105 C
Even-60 C
Constitution

West Virginia
60 C
Constitution

Wisconsin
None
Not applicable

Wyoming
Odd-40 L
Even-20 L
Constitution

________________________________________

We wanted to share Maryland Assembly's legislative agenda---below we see only the SENATE----think as well the HOUSE has near the same and think how as a citizen do we have any opportunity to have political power?  Remember, most of these bills are introduced through our global Wall Street pols for the benefit of corporations and the rich in Maryland or even a corporation tied to Maryland interests.  These bills are not seen by WE THE PEOPLE until these sessions.  This is how corporate interest bills fly right through with only a clause surrounded by lots of PRETEND LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE talking points.

Meanwhile, the pols of course having to throw those bones to local voters install what is a small portion of bills directed at citizens or small business and guess what?  You can bet global Wall Street has reviewed those bills to make sure they do not undermine MOVING FORWARD.


TO EDUCATE ON PUBLIC POLICY IS TO BE WILLING TO READ THROUGH WHAT ARE DELIBERATELY BORING, LEGALESE, AND LONG BILLS TO FIND THOSE VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY BAD GLOBAL WALL STREET NEO-LIBERAL  ONE WORLD POLICIES.

Twelve hundred bills is a really long list so we simply are printing the first and last few pages to show the length.
Status of All Senate Legislation Introduced
2017 Session
As of 5:50 AM on 5/30/2017
(Bill numbers in
bold
indicate enacted legislation;
italics
indicate last action;
dates shown are
calendar dates, with legislative dates in parentheses as needed)
Bill
Short Title/Current Status
SB 1
Education
–
Specialized Intervention Services
–
Reports
Chapter 728
–
5/25
SB 2
Maryland Heritage Areas Authority
–
Revision of Boundaries and
Bounda
ry Maps
Chapter 512
–
5/4
SB 3
Income Tax
–
Subtraction Modification
–
Military Retirement Income
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
1/18
SB 4
Minority Business Enterprises
–
Program Participation
–
Requirements
and Reauthorization
Chapter 340
–
4/18
SB 5
Juvenile Law
–
Continued Detention
–
Minimum Age
Senate: Unfavorable Report by Judicial Proceedings
–
1/30
SB 6
Occupational and Professional Licensing Boards, Commissions, and
Regulatory Entities
–
Notifications of Applicants, Licensees,
Registrants, and Permit Holders
Chapter 246
–
4/18
SB 7
Governor
’
s P
–
20 Leadership Council
–
College and Career Readiness and
College Completion Reporting
–
Revisions
Chapter 775
–
5/25
SB 8
Insurance
–
Risk Management and Own Risk and Solvency Assessment
Act
Chapter 36
–
4/11
SB 9
Motor Vehicles
–
Autonomous and Connected Vehicles
Senate: Unfavorable Report by Judicial Proceedings
–
2/13
SB 10
Child Custody and Visitation
–
Deployed Parents
Senate: Unfavorable Report by Judicial Proceedings
–
3/17
SB 11
Correctional Services
–
Correctional Officers
’
Bill of Rights
–
Composition of Hearing Board
Senate: Unfavorable Report by Judicial Proceedings; Withdrawn
–
1/30
SB 12
Vehicle Laws
–
Obstruction Hanging From Rearview Mirror
–
Enfor
cement
Senate: Returned Passed
–
4/10 (4/4)
SB 13
Public Safety
–
State Militia
House: Hearing Health and Government Operations
–
3/30

Bill
Short Title/Current Status
SB 14
Earned Income Tax Credit
–
Individuals Without Qualifying Children
–
Expansion
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
1/24
SB 15
Insurance
–
Charitable Gift Annuities
–
Special Permit Holders
–
Required Financial Statements
Chapter 504
–
5/4
SB 16
Public Safety
–
Firearm Application
Chapter 192
–
4/18
SB 17
Unemployment Insurance
–
Eligibility for Benefits
–
Business Operation
Closings
Chapter 249
–
4/18
SB 18
Public Ethics
–
Bicounty Commissions
–
Financial Disclosure
Chapter 283
–
4/18
SB 19
Insurance
–
Surplus Lines Insurers, Surplus Lines Brokers, and
Reinsurers
Chapter 37
–
4/11
SB 20
Wicomico County
–
Vehicle Dealer
’
s Licenses
–
Motor Home and Travel
Trailer Shows
Senate: Unfavorable Report by Judicial Proceedings
–
2/13
SB 21
Unemployment Insurance
–
Recovery of
Benefits
–
Collection by
Assessment
Chapter 244
–
4/18
SB 22
Criminal Procedure
–
Criminal Injuries Compensation Board
–
Claimant
Award Ba
sis
Chapter 7
–
4/4
SB 23
Handgun Permits
–
Alternative Expiration Date
–
Private Detectives,
Security Guards, and Special Police Officers
Chapter 190
–
4/18
SB 24
Public Safety
–
Eyewitness Identification Policies
–
Repeal of Submission
Requirement
Chapter 8
–
4/4
SB 25
Maryland Transit Administration
–
Transit Service
–
Contracted
Taxicab Service
Chapter 716
–
5/25
SB 26
Maryland False Claims Act
–
Municipal Corporations
Chapter 632
–
5/25
SB 27
Child Abuse and Neglect
–
Substance
–
Exposed Newborns
–
Reporting
Senate: Unfavorable Report by Judicial Proceedings
–
2/20
SB 28
State Lottery Tickets
–
Prohibited Acts
–
Delivery Service
Senate: Recommitted to Education, Health, and Environmental
Affairs
–
1/19

***************************************************************

**********************************************************




77
Bill
Short Title/Current Status
SB 1161
Education
–
Summer Meals Expansion Grant Program
–
Established
Senate: Hearing Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs
–
3/16
SB 1162
Creation of a State Debt
–
Prince George
’
s County
–
Capitol Heights
Municipal Multiservice Center
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/13
SB 1163
Motor Vehicles
–
Duplicate Drivers
’
Licenses
–
Victims of Robbery
Senate: First Reading Senate Rules
–
3/1
SB 1164
Maryland Transportation Authority
–
Membership
Senate: Hearing Finance
–
3/22
SB 1165
Maryland Longitudinal Data System
–
Student and Workforce Data
Linkage
–
Extension of Time Limit
Senate: Returned Passed
–
4/10 (4/2)
SB 1166
State Designations
–
The Preakness Stakes as the State Cultural Event
Senate: Hearing Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs
–
3/16
SB 1167
Creation of a State Debt
–
Cecil County
–
Elkton Sportsplex Campus and
Performing
–
Visual Arts Center
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/11
SB 1168
Pharmacists
–
Administration of the Influenza Vaccination
–
Age
Requirement
Senate: Hea
ring Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs
canceled
–
3/21
SB 1169
Unemployment Insurance
–
Charge of Benefits
–
Waiver Due to Natu
ral
Disaster
Chapter 733
–
5/25
SB 1170
Creation of a State Debt
–
Howard County
–
Tau Pi Mentoring Program
Ho. Co. 25
–
17
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/11
SB 1171
Harford County
–
Alcoholic Beverages
–
Waiver from School Distance
Restrictions
Senate: Passed Enrolled
–
4/10 (4/3)
SB 1172
Alcoholic Beverages
–
Class 5 Breweries
–
Barrelage and Hours of Sale
Senate: Hearing Educati
on, Health, and Environmental Affairs
–
3/16
SB 1173
Higher Education Degree and Job Certification Without Debt Act of 2017
Senate: Hearin
g Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs
–
3/16
SB 1174
Public Health
–
Certificates of Birth
–
Births Outside an Institution
Senate: Returned Passed
–
4/10 (4/2)

78
2017 Regular Session
-
Current
Status Report (Senate)
Bill
Short Title/Current Status
SB 1175
Creation of a State Debt
–
Prince George
’
s County
–
Transit Oriented
Development Public Art P
rojects
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/11
SB 1176
Creation of a State Debt
–
St. Mary
’
s County
–
Maryland Dove
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/11
SB 1177
Harford County
–
Alcoholic Beverages
–
Common Direct or Indirect
Sharing of Profit
Chap
ter 497
–
5/4
SB 1178
Creation of a State Debt
–
Prince George
’
s County
–
District Heights
Veterans Park
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/11
SB 1179
Creation of a State Debt
–
Harford County
–
McComas School Museum
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/11
SB 1180
Public Safety
–
Handgun Permit Review Board
–
Repeal
Senate: First Reading Senate Rules
–
3/6
SB 1181
Creation of a State Debt
–
Anne Arundel County
–
Historic Annapolis
Museum
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/11
SB 1182
Creation of a State Debt
–
Baltimore City
–
Baltimore Museum of Art
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/11
SB 1183
Creation of a State Debt
–
Baltimore City
–
Maryland Center for
Veterans Education and Training
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/13
SB 1184
Foreclosed and Vacant Residential Property
–
Common Ownership
Communities
–
Payment of Regular Assessments
Senate: Unfavorable Report by Judicial Proceedings; Withdrawn
–
3/17
SB 1185
Real Property
–
New Residential Construction
–
Correction of
Drainage
Defect
Senate: Unfavorable Report by Judicial Proceedings; Withdrawn
–
3/30
SB 1186
Creation of a State Debt
–
Baltimore City
–
C
ross Street Market
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/11
SB 1187
Criminal Procedure
–
Life Without Parole
–
Repeal of Sentencing
Proceeding
Senate: Recommitted to Judicial Proceedings
–
4/4 (3/29)
SB 1188
Creation of a State Debt
–
Baltimore Cou
nty
–
Bais Yaakov Middle
School
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/13
SB 1189
Creation of a State Debt
–
Baltimore County
–
Ner Israel Rabbinical
College
Senate: Hearing Budget and Taxation
–
3/13


79
Bill
Short Title/Current Status
SB 1190
Bay Restoration Fund
–
Upgraded Wastewater Facilities
–
Grants to
Counties and Municipalities
Chapter 397
–
5/4
SB 1191
Schools and Child Care Centers
–
State Grant Program
–
Security
Upgrades for Facilities at Risk of Hate Crimes or Attacks
Chapter 732
–
5/25
SB 1192
Labor and Employment
–
Unemployment Insuran
ce
–
Independent
Contractors and Severance Pay
Senate: Hearing Finance canceled
–
3/28
SB 1193
Anne Arundel County
–
Controlled Water Ski Areas in Maynadier Creek
–
Operation of Vessel
–
Hours of Operation
House: First Reading House Rules and Executive Nominations
–
4/5
(3/29)
SB 1194
Public Health
–
Substance Abuse Treatment Outcome Partnership Fund
House: Hearing Health and Government Operations
–
4/7
SB 1195
Environment
–
Reduction of Lead Risk in Housing
–
Blood Lead Level
Senate: Hearing Judicial Proceedings
–
3/29
SB 1196
Tri
–
County Council for Southern Maryland
–
Financing Purchase or
Lease of Property
–
Exemption From Procurement Law
House: Hearing Health and Government
Operations
–
4/10
SB 1197
Public Health
–
Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission
–
Membership,
Licensing, and Studies
Senate: Hearing Finance
–
3/29
SB 1198
Prince George
’
s County Regional Medical Center Act of 2017
Chapter 19
–
4/6
SB 1199
Long
–
Term Care Insurance
–
Sale or Transfer of Book of Business
Senate: Hearing Finance
–
3/30
SB 1200
Internet Consumer Privacy Rights Act of 2017
House: Referred Economic Matters
–
4/10 (4/3)

____________________________________
Below we see one sad example of LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE POSING.  Maryland exempted itself from Medicare oversight these few decades--illegally------just to pool health funding and send billions of dollars to growing health corporations nationally and expand overseas.  This pooling of Federal health funds with private state health system insurance is what created TIERED HEALTH CARE and is that model for ROMNEY CARE---THE RIGHT WING END OF PUBLIC HEALTH.  The citizens of Maryland have watched as equal protection administration of Medicare and Medicaid brought lots and lots of Federal funding to low-income communities---to our seniors and their health facilities while Maryland was allowed to let those public health facilities decline and become harmful for citizens.

Baltimore and global Johns Hopkins is ground zero for patenting health devices, health procedures, PHARMA and it is top lobbyist for NOT REGULATING HEALTH CARE.  It drives the push to keep name brand patented medicine front and center while allowing vital generic PHARMA and highly successful medical devices out of patent be sidelined while pushing newly patented PHARMA and medical devices foremost.

BAltimore pols are front and center on all that is global health corporation systems and profit-driven health care policies these few decades and below you see almost all these Baltimore pols signed on to this GENERICS BILL.  Which corporations had a voice in writing health policy in Trans Pacific Trade Pact?  Global Johns Hopkins----global Bill Gates PHARMA ---and TPP says----patented medicine trumps generics. 


Keep in mind---Baltimore is building two biotech facilities tied to global Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland Medical System hospitals both of which are designed to be medical PATENT MILLS. All Maryland and Baltimore pols pushed this kind of funding and they almost all support TPP.



Public Health
–
Essential Off
–
Patent or Generic Drugs
–
Price Gouging
–
Prohibition
House: Passed Enrolled
–
4/10 (4/2)
Entitled:

Public Health - Essential Off-Patent or Generic Drugs - Price Gouging - Prohibition
Sponsored by:Speaker
Status:In the House - Passed Enrolled

• Summary
• Documents
• History

Synopsis:



Prohibiting a manufacturer or wholesale distributor from engaging in price gouging in the sale of an essential off-patent or generic drug; establishing that it is not a violation of a specified provision of the Act for a wholesale distributor to increase a price of an essential off-patent or generic drug under specified circumstances; authorizing the Maryland Medical Assistance Program to notify the Attorney General of an increase in the price of an essential off-patent or generic drug under specified circumstances; etc.


The Speaker (By Request - Office of the Attorney General) and Delegates Bromwell, Anderson, Atterbeary, Barkley, B. Barnes, D. Barnes, Barron, Barve, Beidle, Brooks, Carr, Chang, Clippinger, Conaway, Cullison, Davis, Dumais, Ebersole, Fennell, Fraser-Hidalgo, Frick, Frush, Gaines, Gilchrist, Glenn, Gutierrez, Hayes, Haynes, Healey, Hettleman, Hill, Hixson, Holmes, C. Howard, Jackson, Jalisi, Jameson, Jones, Kelly, Knotts, Krimm, Lafferty, Lam, R. Lewis, Lierman, Lisanti, Luedtke, McCray, McIntosh, A. Miller, Moon, Morales, Oaks, Patterson, Pena-Melnyk, Platt, Proctor, Queen, Reznik, Robinson, Rosenberg, Sample-Hughes, Sanchez, Sophocleus, Stein, Sydnor, Tarlau, Turner, Valderrama, Vallario, Waldstreicher, Walker, A. Washington, M. Washington, C. Wilson, K. Young, P. Young, Pendergrass, Angel, Kipke, McDonough, Metzgar, Miele, Saab, West, Aumann, Carey, Mautz, and S. Howard


************************************************

This is what we call left social progressive posing as 99% of Maryland citizens want generics access pols are simply pretending to be listening to WE THE PEOPLE.

Maryland is ground zero for TPP---ground zero for the most private state health system---ground zero for privatizing and ending Federal Medicare and Medicaid making it block grant-----and ground zero for BIOTECH PATENT MILLS not wanting generics taking from profits. Yet we have that bill with tons of global Wall Street pols as CO-SPONSORS......

Maryland is ground zero for TPP---ground zero for the most private state health system---ground zero for privatizing and ending Federal Medicare and Medicaid making it block grant-----and ground zero for BIOTECH PATENT MILLS not wanting generics taking from profits. Yet we have that bill with tons of global Wall Street pols as CO-SPONSORS......


And here is the POSING------Maryland always passes laws sold as social progressive with language TOO VAGUE TO ENFORCE.............


'Despite this unparalleled level of success, the Maryland General Assembly today passed a bill, at the behest of the state attorney general, to give the attorney general the authority to take legal action against generic pharmaceutical companies that engage in “price gouging,” defined as a company instituting a price increase believed to be “unconscionable,” a vague and imprecise term that provides no meaningful standard by which companies may discern whether their prices set in the free market comply with the law'

 So this law was actually written against generics under the guise of PRICE GOUGING ----what will a Maryland Attorney General who is BFF with the US FED think is price gouging and will it be used to make it unprofitable for generics to be manufactured? YOU BETCHA.

Veto Maryland House Bill 631, Which Would Harm Patients by Chilling Generic Drug Competition

• Home
• /Advocacy
• Veto Maryland House Bill 631, Which Would Harm Patients by Chilling Generic Drug Competition

Everyone supports proposals to control rising prescription drug prices, but H.B. 631 would just make the problem worse for Maryland patients and our economy.

• Chester “Chip” Davis, Jr. calls on Governor Hogan in a commentary article for Maryland Matters to veto H.B. 631, legislation that would decrease generic drug competition in Maryland.  “In order to preserve the savings that generic drugs provide to Marylanders, Gov. Hogan should veto this bill,” said Davis.
• H.B. 631 ignores the real cause of increasing prescription drug costs.  The bill only applies to generic drugs, not much more expensive brand-name drugs that cost Maryland patients and tax-payers billions of dollars per year.

• • • Brand name drugs cost patients in Maryland over $3.5 billion dollars, while generics saved Maryland $3.7 billion, including state programs and your tax dollars – in just one year alone.
      • This equates to more than 28% of what Governor Hogan’s Administration proposed to spend on all healthcare expenditures in the state for FY 2017.
    • Generic drugs are a true success story. Generic medicines account for 90% of all prescriptions, but they only account for 27% of drug costs.

• H.B. 631 would chill competition among generic drug manufacturers and allow government bureaucrats to operate the market instead of free market competition.  The bill allows the government to impose costs and regulatory burdens whenever bureaucrats believe that pricing of a medicine is “not justified.”

• • • Year over year, generic drug prices fall, while brand name drug prices rise. The overall price of generics fell over 8% in 2016, and prices are down over 70% since 2008.  Rather than allow the free market to continue working, Maryland would become the first state to reject the market in favor of more government regulation.
    • By subjecting manufacturers of generic drugs to draconian penalties – while ignoring the substantial costs of brand-name prescription drugs – the policy in H.B. 631 would provide an incentive for generic drug companies to avoid selling their products in our state.
    • If fewer affordable generic drugs are available in Maryland, we all lose.

• H.B. 631 has no meaningful standard to allow companies to know when they are breaking the law.  The bill does not define when a price is “not justified” or “excessive.”

• • Given the vague standards set forth in the bill, companies would perpetually be at risk of facing prosecution for taking actions that normally occur during the course of business within the competitive free market.
  • Without a true standard dictating when a free market price is “justified,” H.B. 631 would provide no notice for companies to know whether they are in violation of the new law.
  • Without clear guidance under the law, companies will need to find ways to mitigate the risk of costly litigation with the Attorney General, which creates incentives that could ultimately harm patients.
• Gerard F. Anderson, a professor of health policy and management and professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School Public Health said “the generic industry works incredibly well when there are three, four competitors in the market. It works less well when there are two, and it doesn’t work at all when there’s none.”

____________________________________
'By providing the attorney general with this new level of unchecked and unprecedented authority, where he or any of his successors could choose to sue a manufacturer for raising the price of a generic statin from 10 cents to 12 cents, the Maryland General Assembly has increased the likelihood of the marketplace described by Prof. Anderson that “doesn’t work.”'
And here it is as well------Maryland Assembly did not pass laws to control private patented name brand profiteering---it aimed at generics with law written so vaguely as to be used to CHILL GENERIC MANUFACTURING killing a healthy, competitive market. Mind you, MR Chip Davis is no LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE on protecting generics-----generics have been allowed to profiteer as well----but it is a sign of Maryland wanting to DISSUADE GENERIC MANUFACTURING.


This is how Maryland writes all its bills----making them sound helpful to 99% of citizens with a goal of harming them all for maximized health industry profits. This health care bill is MOVING FORWARD the ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION and Trans Pacific Trade Pact policies.

Guest commentary: Hogan should veto legislation that would decrease generic drug competition
Posted on April 10, 2017 by marylandmattersblogBy Chester “Chip” Davis



Generic drugs have been and continue to be an amazing success story in our health care system.
According to the annual Generic Drug Saving and Access Report compiled by QuintilesIMS, in 2015 generic drugs delivered $227 billion in savings to the U.S. health care system, and $1.6 trillion in savings over the last decade. For that same calendar year, generic drugs comprised 89 percent of all prescriptions written in the United States, but accounted for only 27 percent of total prescription drug costs.

This means the remaining 11 percent of all prescriptions in the U.S. market — branded pharmaceuticals — accounted for 73 percent of total costs. It is an incredible feat when any industry can meet almost 90 percent of all market demand, while doing so for less than one-third of all total costs.


Unlike almost every other sector in health care, including hospitals, insurance, branded pharmaceuticals, etc., year over year the generic drug sector actually experiences price deflation, not inflation. This was reflected in a five-plus year study released last fall by the Government Accountability Office. The primary reason for overall prices going down in the generic sector is due to the level of fierce competition in the generic marketplace, where multiple manufacturers are forced to aggressively compete on price.


Despite this unparalleled level of success, the Maryland General Assembly today passed a bill, at the behest of the state attorney general, to give the attorney general the authority to take legal action against generic pharmaceutical companies that engage in “price gouging,” defined as a company instituting a price increase believed to be “unconscionable,” a vague and imprecise term that provides no meaningful standard by which companies may discern whether their prices set in the free market comply with the law.
The term is defined even further, yet just as vaguely, as “excessive.” To make their case, the attorney general and other supporters often cite to several high-profile cases over the last few years – such as the AIDS drug Daraprim – that have provoked a level of public outrage and political momentum to take action.

Too bad Daraprim is not a generic drug. It is a branded drug with no competitors. Curiously, the bill passed by the Maryland General Assembly today ignores the pricing of branded drugs with no competitors. Yet generic drugs in a competitive market that take a 500 percent price increase – from one cent to five cents per pill – could be subject to legal action by the attorney general.


While the desire to take action against bad actors in the industry is understandable, what has been utterly lost in the debate over prescription drug costs in Maryland this session is the law of unintended consequences; namely, that by giving the attorney general this unbounded and unprecedented level of authority to control pricing in a competitive free market, generic companies will be exposed to a level of risk in Maryland that will require them to evaluate whether they want to continue to market affordable medicines within the state.


And if the new level of risk presented by the legislation compels several manufacturers, all competing in the same therapeutic market, each on its own, to decide that the risk is too high, they will look to stop manufacturing or marketing certain medicines. If that happens, it will mean less competition, not more, and that will translate into fewer options and ultimately higher health care costs, none of which is a good for Maryland patients and taxpayers.


Recently before a U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management and professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, testified on the need to remove barriers to generic competition. As part of his testimony Prof. Anderson stated:


“The generic industry works incredibly well when there are three, four competitors in the market. It works less well when there are two, and it doesn’t work at all when there’s none.”


By providing the attorney general with this new level of unchecked and unprecedented authority, where he or any of his successors could choose to sue a manufacturer for raising the price of a generic statin from 10 cents to 12 cents, the Maryland General Assembly has increased the likelihood of the marketplace described by Prof. Anderson that “doesn’t work.” While lawmakers had the opportunity to narrow the focus of the bill, which would have still given the attorney general the authority to go after bad actors such as the manufacturer of Daraprim and other branded pharmaceuticals, they chose not to do so.


In 2015, generic drugs saved the state of Maryland $3.7 billion, which equates to more than 28 percent of what Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration proposed to spend on all health care expenditures in the state for  fiscal 2017. And with this bill set to become law, that historical level of savings is now at risk, yet another policy that would work against, not for, Maryland patients and taxpayers.

In order to preserve the savings that generic drugs provide to Marylanders, Gov. Hogan should veto this bill.

A number of Maryland lawmakers are already touting Maryland’s leadership in being the first state in the U.S. to pass this type of legislation. One day, in the not too distant future, they should be prepared to defend why Maryland was the first state to lead the nation in creating less market-based competition and higher overall prescription drug costs, while simultaneously increasing the risk of future drug shortages for Maryland’s patients.
Chester “Chip” Davis is the president and CEO of the Association for Accessible Medicines.


___________________________________________

'In the second letter, after a meeting with Senate Finance Committee International Trade Counsel Everett Eissenstat, Flórez wrote that Eissenstat said that authorizing the generic version would “violate the intellectual property rights” of Novartis. Eissenstat also said that if “the Ministry of Health did not correct this situation, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States and related interest groups could become very vocal and interfere with other interests that Colombia could have in the United States,” according to the letter'.

Global Johns Hopkins is of course front and center in this International Trade Counsel-----look at how captured these Congressional Senate committees are----CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA-----waxing for the DARK AGES days of Roman Empire.

When a state's Congressional pols are raging Clinton/Obama neo-liberals-----when a state assembly is filled with raging Clinton neo-liberals ----when a Baltimore City Hall is filled with raging Bush/Clinton global Wall Street---then they are not going to pass laws helping GENERICS.

If we notice Baltimore Sun and all Maryland media out of 1200 Senate bills and even more House bills chose to make this bill headlines to FOOL MARYLAND CITIZENS.

Leaks Show Senate Aide Threatened Colombia Over Cheap Cancer Drug

Zaid Jilani
May 14 2016, 10:30 a.m.


Leaked diplomatic letters sent from Colombia’s Embassy in Washington describe how a staffer with the Senate Finance Committee, which is led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, warned of repercussions if Colombia moves forward on approving the cheaper, generic form of a cancer drug.


The drug is called imatinib. Its manufacturer, Novartis, markets the drug in Colombia as Glivec. The World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines last year suggested it as treatment not only for chronic myeloid leukemia, but also gastrointestinal tumors. Currently, the cost of an annual supply is over $15,000, or about two times the average Colombian’s income.
On April 26, Colombian Minister of Health Alejandro Gaviria announced plans to take the first step in a multi-step process that could eventually result in allowing generic production of the drug. A generic version of the drug that recently began production in India is expected to cost 30 percent less than the brand-name version.



Andrés Flórez, deputy chief of mission at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, D.C., wrote letters on April 27 and April 28 to Maria Angela Holguin of Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, detailing concerns he had about possible congressional retaliation for such a move. The letters were obtained by the nonprofit group Knowledge Ecology International, which works on drug patent issues. They were also leaked to Colombian media outlets El Espectador and NoticiasUno.


In the second letter, after a meeting with Senate Finance Committee International Trade Counsel Everett Eissenstat, Flórez wrote that Eissenstat said that authorizing the generic version would “violate the intellectual property rights” of Novartis. Eissenstat also said that if “the Ministry of Health did not correct this situation, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States and related interest groups could become very vocal and interfere with other interests that Colombia could have in the United States,” according to the letter.
In particular, Flórez expressed a worry that “this case could jeopardize the approval of the financing of the new initiative ‘Peace Colombia.’”


The Obama administration has pledged $450 million for Peace Colombia, which seeks to bring together rebels and the government to end decades of fighting that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and a shattered civil society. These funds will be used for, among other things, removing land mines. The country has the second-highest number of land-mine fatalities in the world, behind only Afghanistan.


Hatch has close ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical and health product manufacturers form the second-largest pool of donors to his campaigns. The industry’s main trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, spent $750,000 funding an outside nonprofit that backed Hatch’s re-election in 2012. The lobbying group also employed Scott Hatch, one of the senator’s sons, as a lobbyist, while donating to his family charity, the Utah Families Foundation.


For his part, Eissenstat has won the “Lighthouse Award” at the annual dinner of the Washington International Trade Association. WITA’s board of directors is composed largely of government relations staff from major corporations who help shape trade and intellectual property policy in their favor: WalMart, Microsoft, and Gap all have representatives. In bestowing the award on Eissenstat, WITA board member Bill Lane said the award is given to a “shining light of the trade community.”
The same year, his boss Hatch received the dinner’s Congressional Leadership Award.


Andrea Carolina Reyes, a pharmacist who works with the Colombia-based medical nonprofit Misión Salud, called the pressure to suppress the cheaper drug harmful. “I would … ask [Hatch] to consider that we’re talking about people’s lives, and this needs to mean something to him,” she told The Intercept. “In Colombia, we really have health constraints. There’s people, they have no access to anything. They live hours from health institutions, and they don’t have even the cheapest medicines.”


Neither Eissenstat nor Hatch responded to multiple requests for comment. “We do not comment on internal correspondence,” Olga Acosta, press officer at the Colombian Embassy, told The Intercept.


_________________________________________

WHO PUSHED HOUSE BILL 631-----AS PROTECTING GENERICS?
MAGGIE MCINTOSH was chair of Health before being moved to APPROPRIATIONS ----Antonio Hayes and Sandy Rosenberg -----being the usual global Wall Street tools in Baltimore-----Pena-Melnyk always sells herself as left social progressive and always makes these bad votes. Please watch as MAGGIE MCINTOSH----SIMPLY AN O'MALLEY is moved into a possible run for governor----she is the face of MARYLAND AS RAGING GLOBAL FAR-RIGHT WING CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM----ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ----
Washington----Oaks----Robinson ---Hayes---Haynes----Conaway-----all PRETENDING THIS BILL PROTECTS GENERICS----if you are angry at PHARMA going sky high----of generics being under attack---hold these global Wall Street CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA pols accountable.


When WE THE PEOPLE have rolling peaceful protests for days, weeks, and months to get rid of global Wall Street pols----these are they! SHOW THEM THE MONEY AND THEY WILL DO ANYTHING THEY ARE TOLD!


This is that black, brown, and white citizen 5% to the 1%-------killing WE THE PEOPLE.


HOUSE OF DELEGATES
STANDING COMMITTEES
HEALTH & GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS COMMITTEE
[photo, House Office Building, 6 Bladen St. (from College Ave.), Annapolis, Maryland]
Origin & Functions
Subcommittees



KAREN LEWIS YOUNG
Democrat, District 3A, Frederick County
CHRISTOPHER R. (CHRIS) WEST
Republican, District 42B, Baltimore County
KATHY SZELIGA
Republican, District 7, Baltimore County & Harford County
SHEREE L. SAMPLE-HUGHES
Democrat, District 37A, Dorchester & Wicomico Counties
SID A. SAAB
Republican, District 33, Anne Arundel County
SAMUEL I. (SANDY) ROSENBERG
Democrat, District 41, Baltimore City
ANDREW PLATT
Democrat, District 17, Montgomery County
JOSELINE A. PEÑA-MELNYK
Democrat, District 21, Anne Arundel & Prince George's Counties
JAMES MATTHEW (MATT) MORGAN
Republican, District 29A, St. Mary's County
MARICE I. MORALES
Democrat, District 19, Montgomery County
CHRISTIAN J. MIELE
Republican, District 8, Baltimore County
RICHARD W. METZGAR
Republican, District 6, Baltimore County
PATRICK L. McDONOUGH
Republican, District 7, Baltimore County & Harford County
SUSAN W. KREBS
Republican, District 5, Carroll County
NICHOLAUS R. KIPKE
Republican, District 31B, Anne Arundel County
ARIANA B. KELLY
Democrat, District 16, Montgomery County
TERRI L. HILL, M.D.
Democrat, District 12, Baltimore County & Howard County
ANTONIO L. HAYES
Democrat, District 40, Baltimore City
BONNIE L. CULLISON
Democrat, District 19, Montgomery County
EREK L. BARRON
Democrat, District 24, Prince George's County
ANGELA M. ANGEL, Esq.
Democrat, District 25, Prince George's County
The Speaker (By Request - Office of the Attorney General) and Delegates Bromwell, Anderson, Atterbeary, Barkley, B. Barnes, D. Barnes, Barron, Barve, Beidle, Brooks, Carr, Chang, Clippinger, Conaway, Cullison, Davis, Dumais, Ebersole, Fennell, Fraser-Hidalgo, Frick, Frush, Gaines, Gilchrist, Glenn, Gutierrez, Hayes, Haynes, Healey, Hettleman, Hill, Hixson, Holmes, C. Howard, Jackson, Jalisi, Jameson, Jones, Kelly, Knotts, Krimm, Lafferty, Lam, R. Lewis, Lierman, Lisanti, Luedtke, McCray, McIntosh, A. Miller, Moon, Morales, Oaks, Patterson, Pena-Melnyk, Platt, Proctor, Queen, Reznik, Robinson, Rosenberg, Sample-Hughes, Sanchez, Sophocleus, Stein, Sydnor, Tarlau, Turner, Valderrama, Vallario, Waldstreicher, Walker, A. Washington, M. Washington, C. Wilson, K. Young, P. Young, Pendergrass, Angel, Kipke, McDonough, Metzgar, Miele, Saab, West, Aumann, Carey, Mautz, and S. Howard

For US citizens wanting US PROTECTIONISM because that is the only way we rebuild our US cities with an economy designed to benefit all citizens and their ability to start, grow, and feel a lifelong stability in that business the last major public policy in achieving this is infrastructure development.  We shared a few articles from Maryland and Baltimore pols and their direction with these infrastructure plans.  Whether it is rail tunnels, telecom and energy conduits, ports, interstate and road construction---these are structures vital to ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS and how they are built and operate determine whether our citizens and their businesses will be able to compete and/or stay in business for the long term.  Baltimore has these few decades been a city of PATRONAGE for all business structures for the 99% because policies were leaving people unemployed, underemployed leaving no consumers for small business.  This attack on American wage and quality of life leads to extreme poverty for 99% and no consumers for anyone wanting to start a local business.  We all know what third world economies look like for small business owners---they are almost all MICRO-LOAN subsistence businesses. 

WE HAVE BALTIMORE POLS BOTH CITY HALL AND MARYLAND ASSEMBLY BREAKING DOWN ALL AVENUES OF WAGE MOVING FORWARD TO THIRD WORLD WAGES NO MATTER THE POSING AROUND $15 AN HOUR.

Our government was always the biggest buyer of small business products just to maintain and grow local economies.  Today almost all government purchases are from global corporations.  US PROTECTIONISM comes with this commitment to buy local as we know strengthening and broadening local economies LOWERS the price and becomes competitive with global corporations. 

PLEASE DO NOT FALL INTO THE PUSH TO EVER-LOWER WAGES TO GROW SMALL BUSINESS---PLEASE DON'T FALL FOR THE PUSH TO BUY AT THE CHEAPEST PRICE. 

I shared the article of our Mayor PUGH working with Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration....NTIA.  This is ONE WORLD ONE GRID and the INTERNET OF THINGS has PR and marketing as usual that these policies are DEMOCRATIC----WILL INCLUDE ALL GLOBAL CITIZENS---when in fact we already know it will be highly exclusive to global corporations and the global 1%  and the information WE THE PEOPLE will be able to access will be only that information the global 1% want us to receive. We are well on the way with national media controlling all  our local media and all this filled with FAKE NEWS.  Take away our TV, Radio, print and move all online----under a GLOBAL GOGGLE---

THERE IS NO PATHWAY TO US PROTECTIONISM for WE THE PEOPLE with these infrastructure development plans MOVING FORWARD.  We should have a city full of citizens bringing rolling protests every day for weeks and months JUST OVER THIS ISSUE.  

THERE CAN BE NO US PROTECTIONISM FOR OUR LOCAL ECONOMIES WHEN MOVING FORWARD IS BUILDING ONE WORLD ONE GRID FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND GLOBAL BANKING.

Here we see what will continue to be the stance with global Wall Street pols----NO REGULATION OF INTERNET=====THE OPPOSITE OF INTERNET AS A UTILITY which is NET NEUTRALITY.


Critical Read
NTIA: The internet of things doesn't need new rules

• By Mark Rockwell
• Jan 13, 2017

 What: A paper from the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration on how to foster advancement of emerging internet of things technology.




'The rise of IoT, it said, will place more pressure on already stretched spectrum resources'.


Is this the future of the Internet of Things?

Global Agenda

• Digital
• Future of the Internet
• ScienceThis article is published in collaboration with SAP Community Network. 


• 
  Imagine that your home security system lets you know when your kids get home from school. As they’re grabbing an afternoon snack, your kitchen takes inventory and sends a shopping list to your local supermarket. There, robots prepare the goods and pack them for home delivery into an autonomous vehicle – or a drone. Meanwhile, your smart watch, connected to a system that senses and analyzes real-time health indicators, alerts you to a suggested dinner menu it just created based on your family’s nutritional needs and ingredients available in your pantry. If you signal your approval, it offers to warm the oven before you get home from work.


• 
  This scenario isn’t as futuristic as you might think. In fact, what Gartner calls “the device mesh” is the logical evolution of the Internet of Things. All around us and always on, it will be both ubiquitous and subtle — ambient intelligence.


• 
  We’ll do truly different things, instead of just doing things differently. Today’s processes and problems are only a small subset of the many, many scenarios possible when practically everything is instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent.


• 
  We’re also going to need to come up with new ways of interacting with the technology and the infrastructure that supports it. Instead of typing on a keyboard or swiping a touchscreen, we’ll be surrounded by various interfaces that capture input automatically, almost incidentally. It will be a fundamental paradigm shift in the way we think of “computing,” and possibly whether we think about computing at all.
  
  
  The Internet of not-things


• 
  The foundation will be a digital infrastructure that responds to its surroundings and the people in it, whether that means ubiquitous communications, ubiquitous entertainment, or ubiquitous opportunities for commerce. This infrastructure will be so seamless that rather than interacting with discrete objects, people will simply interact with their environment through deliberate voice and gesture — or cues like respiration and body temperature that will trigger the environment to respond.


• 
  Once such an infrastructure is in place, the possibilities for innovation explode. The power of Moore’s Law is now amplified by Metcalfe’s Law, which says that a network’s value is equal to the square of the number of participants in it. All these Internet-connected “things” — the sensors, devices, actuators, drones, vehicles, products, etc.  — will be able to react automatically, seeing, analyzing, and combining to create value in as yet unimaginable ways.  The individual “things” themselves will meld into a background of ambient connectedness and responsiveness.


• 
  The path is clearly marked
  Think of the trends we’ve seen emerge in recent years:
  
  
• Sensors and actuators, including implantables and wearables, that let us capture more data and impressions from more objects in more places, and that affect the environment around them.

 

• Ubiquitous computing and hyperconnectivity, which exponentially increase the flow of data between people and devices and among devices themselves.

 

• Nanotechnology and nanomaterials, which let us build ever more complex devices at microscopic scale.

 

• Artificial intelligence, in which algorithms become increasingly capable of making decisions based on past performance and desired results.

 

• Vision as an interface to participate in and control augmented and virtual reality
• Blockchain technology, which makes all kinds of digital transactions secure, verifiable, and potentially automatic.

 

• As these emerging technologies become more powerful and sophisticated, they will increasingly overlap. For example, the distinctions between drones, autonomous vehicles,and robotics are already blurring. This convergence, which multiplies the strengths of each technology, makes ambient intelligence not just desirable but inevitable.


• 
  Early signposts on the way


• 
  We’re edging into the territory of ambient intelligence today. Increasingly complex sensors, systems architectures, and software can gather, store, manage, and analyze vastly more data in far less time with much greater sophistication.
  Home automation is accelerating, allowing people to program lighting, air conditioning, audio and video, security systems, appliances, and other complex devices and then let them run more or less independently. Drones, robots, and autonomous vehicles can gather, generate, and navigate by data from locations human beings can’t or don’t access. Entire urban areas like Barcelona and Singapore are aiming to become “smart cities,” with initiatives already underway to automate the management of services like parking, trash collection, and traffic lights.


• 
  Our homes, vehicles, and communities may not be entirely self-maintaining yet, but it’s possible to set parameters within which significant systems operate more or less on their own. Eventually, these systems will become proficient enough at pattern matching that they’ll be able to learn from each other. That’s when we’ll hit the knee of the exponential growth curve.


• 
  Where are we heading?


• 
  Experts predict that, by 2022, 1 trillion networked sensors will be embedded in the world around us, with up to 45 trillion in 20 years. With this many sources of data for all manner of purposes, systems will be able to arrive at fast, accurate decisions about nearly everything. And they’ll be able to act on those things at the slightest prompting, or with little to no action on your part at all.


• 
  Ambient intelligence could transform cities through dynamic routing and signage for both drivers and pedestrians. It could manage mass transit for optimal efficiency based on real-time conditions. It could monitor environmental conditions and mitigate potential hotspots proactively, predict the need for government services and make sure those services are delivered efficiently, spot opportunities to streamline the supply chain and put them into effect automatically.


• 
  Nanotechnology in your clothing could send environmental data to your smart phone, or charge it from electricity generated as you walk. But why carry a phone when any glass surface, from your bathroom mirror to your kitchen window, could become an interactive interface for checking your calendar, answering email, watching videos, and anything else we do today on our phones and tablets? For that matter, why carry a phone when ambient connectivity will let us simply speak to each other across a distance without devices?


• 
  How to get there


• 
  In Tech Trends 2015, Deloitte Consulting outlines four capabilities required for ambient computing:
• Integrating information flow between varying types of devices from a wide range of global manufacturers with proprietary data and technologies
• Performing analytics and management of the physical objects and low-level events to detect signals and predict impact

 

• Orchestrating those signals and objects to fulfill complex events or end-to-end business processes
• Securing and monitoring the entire system of devices, connectivity, and information exchange
• These technical challenges are daunting, but doable.


• 
  Of course, businesses and governments need to consider the ramifications of systems that can sense, reason, act, and interact for us. We need to solve the trust and security issues inherent in a future world where we’re constantly surrounded by connectivity and information. We need to consider what happens when tasks currently performed by humans can be automated into near invisibility. And we need to think about what it means to be human when ambient intelligence can satisfy our wants and needs before we express them, or before we even know that we have them.
  
  & Technology

_________________________________________________

'Do conservatives realize our founder fathers were strict trade protectionists and reviled the concept of "free trade" like Trump'?


Below we have the most obvious attack on US PROTECTIONISM----global Wall Street. As John Adams states---nothing kills prosperity more than banks. When 2008 economic crash revealed the massive global Wall Street frauds WE THE PEOPLE should have been out en masse every day for weeks and months in protest of an Obama appointing the same Wall Street fraudsters and Clinton era people bringing these frauds. Then we watched these several years as the next massive global banking fraud----US Treasury bond and municipal bond debt unfolded. That occurred because we left global Wall Street CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS in office.

US PROTECTIONISM cannot be driven by banking and debt. This is what brought the US FED into place at the time of ROARING 20s Wall Street frauds-----US citizens and pols had the knowledge of keeping a central bank away----they had the knowledge of keeping freemasonry out of government because they were educated and remembered why we fought The American Revolution. Those folks saying that was then and this is now are either DELIBERATELY MISLEADING OR NOT EDUCATED ON AMERICAN HISTORY.....WORLD HISTORY. Most citizens understand it is bad to lose national, state, or local sovereignty and along with it rights as citizens.
WE ARE WATCHING AS THE ENTIRE PLANNING DESIGN FOR INFRASTRUCTURE IS BEING DONE BY GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND GLOBAL BANKING.


"Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good." - John Adams


'This pattern even predates American independence. During the colonial period, the British government tried to force its American colonies to become suppliers of raw materials to the nascent British industrial machine while denying them any manufacturing industry of their own'.


I like John Hagerman's response to basic common sense economics as being FLAT EARTH.....that coming from a global neo-conservative Stanford IVY LEAGUE grad.


Do conservatives realize our founder fathers were strict trade protectionists and reviled the concept of "free trade" like Trump?

Rob Weir, Politically libertarian, personally conservative
Answered 23 Feb

Yes, most conservatives understand that knowledge of modern economics was not widespread among the 18th century agrarian gentry who founded the country. I suspect this is understood, on some level, by most people, regardless of political orientation.




Gregory Norton, studied at Stanford Graduate School of Business
Answered 23 Feb

The first widely-accepted explanation of why trade protectionism was harmful was not published until 1776, and the founders were probably too busy to read it. Further amplification and explanation of the benefits of free trade (and the harm of protectionism) was not published until the 1840s, when the founders were dead.
I suppose anyone who is familiar with the history of economic theory realizes that.
How many people realize that today’s protectionists are the economic equivalent of flat-Earthers, 170 years out of date?





John Hagerman, studied at Augsburg College
Answered 3 Mar


The previous answer that dismissed the founder fathers fears about free trade prompted me to answer this question with a different take.

To simply dismiss the founding fathers as ignorant of modern economic theory is to sidestep the question. The founders of this country were very aware of the effects of trade policy. To be specific, they were very aware of the unfair trade practices of the British Parliament and King George. Many members of parliament, as well as the king, owned stock in the East India Company. This in itself might not have been a problem, but when they passed a law giving a special tax cut to the East India Company that was designed to make them money, at the expense of American businesses, the colony pushed back. The Boston Tea Party is an example of that push back.

When the crown decided to impose the Stamp Act as a way to force the colonies to pay the costs of maintaining British occupying forces, while at the same time again benefitting the East India Company at the expense of American business, that was too much for the colonies and the revolution was on.


In writing the constitution those founder fathers were very aware of the corrupting power of unfettered corporations and tried to write a document that would protect our citizens against the power. Unfortunately, when Reagan came along the conservatives forgot the lessons of two hundred years and decided to pursue policies that returned nearly unfettered power to corporations at the expense of the people.
This has resulted in money corrupting our politics and the dividing of our country.
_______________________________________

Here is a wise citizen educated in public policy as regards the effects of not only monopoly but multi-national corporations on his nation's economy. The US is a first world, developed nation MOVING FORWARD to being brought to this developed nation status. When global corporate campuses and global factories fill our US cities our economies become just like that of this developed nation and its citizen.
These few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA has seen gradual movement towards this decline staging re-occupation of our national economy. National, state, and local global Wall Street pols have been and are today writing all the economic policies creating an environment for these global corporations to operate free from any US laws or oversight. That includes PROTECTIONISM for our local small, regional, corporations in US.

'Some people think that globalization plays a major role in the progress of developing nations because of the presence of these companies. Definitely, they are not the basis for the progress of developing countries. Multinational companies’ presence has more serious negative impacts on developing countries’ labor rights, human health and economy'.




Multinational Companies: A Curse to Developing Countries?


Posted on January 20, 2010 in Business and EconomyThasomini Palaniyandy:


In this twenty-first century, multinational companies have become the central institutions of developing nations. The government of a country should be concerned about food security, industrial production and other commodities that the country needs for its citizens. These concerns encourage developing nations to implement transnational corporation to fulfill their necessities.


Globalization connects people from all over the world, specifically, through advance in technology and transportation. Removal of trade barriers encourages multinational companies to start new branches in developing nations. Although multinational companies have become ubiquitous in the developing world, there has always been an uncertainty about them, in both positive and negative ways.


Some people think that globalization plays a major role in the progress of developing nations because of the presence of these companies. Definitely, they are not the basis for the progress of developing countries. Multinational companies’ presence has more serious negative impacts on developing countries’ labor rights, human health and economy.


Peoples’ common concept is that multinational companies’ existence in developing countries provides employments to the populace. In this globalized world, the integration of these companies allows people to earn money by on own, without relying on others. However, people, forget to consider labor exploitation, where labors receive low wages, work in hazardous environment without protection, and are deprived of labor rights. For instance, women perform two-thirds of all work, if it includes unpaid labor, but they receive only ten percent of the total wages paid worldwide. People consider globalization as a tool for the development of women. If globalization provides a better environment, why are women still getting low wages and are treated as slaves?


These global companies are profit minded and they search for cheap human power, exploiting laborers’ rights in developing countries, especially of women’s by giving them fewer wages and by misusing their rights. Thus, presence of multinational companies is promoting the existence of a callous environment for employees in third world nations.


Next, in developing world, food selling companies are omnipresent, which creates a general perception among people that it will make life easier. Globalization leads multinational companies to promote consumerism. There are many fast food companies, such as Mc Donald’s and KFC, in the developing world that provide alternative foods and makes life easier. However, does anyone notice the consequences of this consumerism? People consider fast food easy, and become addicted to it, which is unhealthy. Multinational corporations promote a certain kind of consumerist culture and spread western lifestyle among the people of developing countries; 115 million people suffer from obesity-related problems as well. The consequences of obesity for adults are well known. Obesity increases mortality from many causes, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. As a result, fast food companies are not making life easier, but they are also making death easier and life miserable in developing countries.


Finally, it is said that existence of multinational companies mitigates poverty in developing nations. Most of the countries are involved in free trade, and they exchange commodities with each other. As the trade barriers are reduced, the rich nations dump cheap products into poor countries, and the multinational companies act as catalysts for this process. Conversely, the process of globalization has exploited manufactures in developing countries, and has caused massive disruptions in living conditions.


As multinational companies have emerged in developing countries, local producers have to compete with these large companies, adversely affecting the local economy. Moreover, these multinational companies also use the national resources of these developing nations such as natural resources, infrastructure and human power. For example, some companies are making furniture by destroying forests in developing countries, which devastates the natural environment and affects the local furniture producers as well.

In conclusion, globalization challenges the progress of developing nations by adversely affecting the life of labors, the nations’ health and economy. Multinational companies’ existence in third world nations has many drawbacks, which are often disregarded by people. As rich nations utilize developing countries resources, the present form of globalization must be changed and developing countries must free themselves from the grasp of multinational companies for real growth.

We wanted to share this as all of what were middle-class professions are disappearing---here is OBAMA/RAHM EMMANUEL CHICAGO bringing public K-12 DOWN and replacing it with global neo-liberal vocational training corporations. With that our professional teachers will be replaced with part-time and temporary education techs. Only that 1% of educators will be extremely rich while 99% of citizens tied to education will be extremely poor global labor pool workers.

$30,000 is the Living Wage poverty line-----if privatization of K-12 MOVES FORWARD Foreign Economic Zones like Chicago and Baltimore will pay the same here as in Foreign Economic Zones in developing nations!

AND NONE OF THESE SMALL BUSINESS EDUCATION OWNERSHIP OR PATRONAGE NGOS WILL BE AROUND.

Trans Pacific Trade Pact and its protectionist policies will have those global education corporations coming to US cities and saying----WE CAN DO THIS CHEAPER AND MORE EFFICIENTLY and grab hold just as a global VEOLA ENVIRONMENT controls our public water and waste agencies---just as VEOLA TRANSPORTATION controls our public transportation agencies---just as global hedge funds control our US Ports.

Our US Constitutional and Federal laws for 300 years with court precedence protects against MONOPOLY AND ESPECIALLY GLOBAL MONOPOLY----LET'S JUST STOP AND REVERSE THIS EASY PEASY.


'Charter School Teachers Plan to Strike on May 25th
May 20, 2017

On May 04, 2017, teachers, their assistants, and paraprofessionals at the Edgewater, Il-based Passages Charter School voted 43-0 to strike. On May 19, 2017, they set the prospective strike date as May 25, 2017, as noted in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Teachers say they are paid “rock-bottom” salaries in the $30,000 to $40,000 range — well below Chicago Public Schools teachers and low even for charter schools — while the current and former CEOs of the stand-alone school earned a combined $540,000 in the year ending June 30, 2016. Union members believe their salaries are low because of administration’s spending on itself — tax records show $281,000 alone on “other compensation” for the retired CEO — and overhead expenses and because those leaders do no fundraising.

As the Sun-Times notes, if Passages teachers follow through with plans to strike, they will be the first charter school faculty to do so.

The union that represents Passages Charter School employees is ChiACTS Local 4343, which represents professionals at 12 other Chicago charter schools (Passages is not the list, but news of the Passages strike date can be found on this ChiACTS Local 4343 web page).

Passages Charter Schools is operated by the Chicago-based nonprofit, Asian Human Services, Inc. (AHS).

The Sun-Times article notes that meanwhile, according to the Passages school website message to parents, negotiations continue. (Note that the letter below represents the official school stance– that of AHS– not that of the teachers and other school personnel who are represented by the union in the AHS negotiation):

May 19, 2017

Dear Parents/Guardians and Students:

As you may be aware, AHS has been in contract negotiations with the Union that represents the teachers and teacher assistants at Passages Charter School. We want to update you about these negotiations, and reassure you that our main concern is the education and well-being of our more than 400 students who attend Passages.

We have been meeting with the Union for more than a year. During that time, we have discussed many issues at the bargaining table. We have reached agreement on several of those issues, including employee discipline, health and safety, grade entry, and after school events.

At the same time, we have several issues that remain open, including salaries, and the length of the school day and school year. And we continue to negotiate these issues at a time of significant financial uncertainty, given the local and State-wide budget issues that have resulted in reduced funding to all charter schools, including Passages. Most recently, Passages’ funding was reduced yet again, by $189.58 per pupil, causing a reduction of approximately $83,000 in the current fiscal year.

We know that the Union took a strike authorization vote two weeks ago. We understand this raised questions and concerns for you, and we were disappointed that the Union chose this path. A strike is a serious step that affects all of us within the Passages community.

We met with the Union last week for another bargaining session. At that meeting, we asked the Union about the strike vote and if they had set a strike date. The Union told us that no strike date had been set.

We have several more meetings scheduled with the Union over the next few weeks. In fact, we are set to meet with the Union at 4:00 p.m. today. However, we just learned that the Union is going to announce a strike date today at 4:00 p.m., at the same time we are scheduled to meet, and before we have been able to make another counterproposal.

We want you to know that we are working very hard to reach a fair compromise with the Union, and that we take very seriously our duty to bargain in good faith. We also want you to know that we continue to keep the education of Passages students first in all that we do.

We are thankful for your understanding and cooperation at this time. We will do all we can to minimize any impact on students, and will keep you informed of further developments as we learn them. Please check the website http://www.passagescharterschool.com, call 773-433-3530, or email passages.info@ahschicago.org with any questions.

The above letter to parents does not mention the stark differences in teacher and CEO salaries noted in the Sun-Times. The letter also includes no information about whether Passages CEOs will agree to a salary reduction to coincide with the per-pupil funding cut.

May 25th, 2017, is less than a work week away.

Will American education experience its first charter school teacher strike?

Stay tuned, readers. Stay tuned.

__________________________________________

'U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones: Background and
Issues for Congress


Mary Jane Bolle
Specialist in Internatio
nal Trade and Finance'


Below is that graphic we share often as a site to let a citizen know where Foreign Economic Zones are inside your state.  It is the status of FTZ that gives the Federal government and particularly the President===Executive branch control of our local and state economies.  His power is only with duties and tariffs---NOT the powers given by Trans Pacific Trade Pact.  Foreign Economic Zones are illegal because they attack the sovereignty of states and local governments to exercise their control of these economies.  States and city/counties have these few decades passed laws allowing the Federal control even as our state constitutions state PROTECTIONISM, ANTI-MONOPOLY, FREE MARKET.

What has been allowed these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA now Trump was illegal and unconstitutional so WE THE PEOPLE must stand against these FTZ designations.  This is the only way we will have control of local city/county economies.  If you are shouting for jobs, businesses, against being relegated to subcontractor to a subcontract to a global corporation----this is what we must fight and it is the original founding father PROTECTIONISM we are fighting for.

'U.S. FOREIGN-TRADE ZONES
This list gives the address and phone number of the contact person for each FTZ project. If the contact person is not an employee of the grantee, the name of the grantee organization is also given. If assistance is needed or if your contact information has changed, please call ((202) 482-2862) or e-mail the FTZ Staff, U.S. Department of Commerce.
Grantees: Contact us to add your email and/or web address to the list below'.

U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones: Background and
Issues for Congress


Mary Jane Bolle
Specialist in Internatio
nal Trade and Finance


Brock R. Williams
Analyst in International Trade and Finance
November 12, 2013



Congressional Research Service
7-5700
www.crs.gov
R42686



U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones: Background and Issues for Congress
Congressional Research Service



Summary

U.S. foreign-trade zones (FTZs) are geographic areas declared to be outside the normal customs
territory of the United States. This means that, for foreign merchandise entering FTZs and re-
exported as different products, customs procedures
are streamlined and tariffs do not apply. For
products intended for U.S. consumption, full customs procedures are applied and duties are
payable when they exit the FTZ.


In 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression, Congress passed the U.S. Foreign-Trade Zones
Act. It was designed to expedite and encourage international trade while promoting domestic
activity and investment. The U.S. FTZ program offers
a variety of customs benefits to businesses
which combine foreign and domestic merchandise in FTZs. Similar types of “zones” exist in 135
countries, employing about 66 million workers worldwide. Though some aspects differ, all have
streamlined customs procedures and no duties applicable on components and raw materials
combined in zones and then exported. Use of the zones can facilitate cooperative international
production for a substantial share of the global supply chain.


U.S. FTZs can affect the competitiveness of U.S. companies by allowing savings through (1) duty
reduction on “inverted tariff structures” (where tariffs are higher on imported components than on
finished products); (2) customs and inventory efficiencies; and (3) duty exemption on goods
exported from, or consumed, scrapped, or destroyed in, a zone. Though difficult to achieve, other
possible alternatives, such as broad-based tariff
reductions through multilateral negotiations, and
overall customs reform might provide some of the same competitive advantages as zone use in a
more efficient manner, while also ensuring that all importers have equal access.


Zone activity represents a significant share of U.S. trade. In 2012, over 13% of foreign goods
entered the United States through FTZs or bonded warehouses—72% of them as crude oil. Most
shipments arriving through FTZs were consumed in the United States; the rest were exported.
Crude oil byproducts such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, kerosene, and petrochemicals dominate
FTZ output. Other key products include autos, consumer electronics, and machinery. U.S. zone
activity occurs primarily in FTZ manufacturing operations.


The U.S. FTZ system is overseen by the Secretaries of Commerce and the
Treasury, who constitute the U.S. FTZ Board. The Board is responsible for the establishment of
zones, the authorization of specific production activity, and the general oversight of zones. It also
appoints an Executive Secretary, who oversees
the Board’s staff. Homeland Security’s Customs
and Border Protection (CBP) directly oversees FTZs. It activates the zones and secures and
controls dutiable merchandise moving into and out of them. CBP oversight also includes both
protection of U.S. tariff revenue and protection from illegal activity through screening, targeting,
and inspections.

In 2012, the U.S. FTZ Board issued new regulations. They focused primarily on streamlining the
application procedures and shortening, generally from a year to four months, the time for FTZ
approval for manufacturing

______________________________________


Here we see WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION AND WORLD BANK telling us which nations have the nerve to protect SOVEREIGN ECONOMIES.  These few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have seen World Bank/IMF brought in to install global corporate tribunal rule and each time they brought those nations' economies down with installed 1%.  This is what happened to the US these few decades and WORLD BANK/WORLD TRADE wants the US to end its sovereign rights to its economy as well----that is what Trans Pacific Trade Pact and here the term PROTECTIONIST comes in.

The right wing voters are often led to believe this is simply about getting rid of social programs from New Deal-----they are led to believe these policies really do create jobs and businesses for local citizens when these policy goals have the OPPOSITE GOALS.

Where global Wall Street tied to WORLD BANK/ like to create national and international media that lots of nations are falling into line on ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES-----they are actually NOT.  Most global financial analysts never thought this would occur AND THEY STILL DO NOT THINK IT WILL.

CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA now TRUMP don't care---they are simply trying to end US sovereignty----return US to colonial status as all North, Central, and South American nations and then they will worry about those Asian, Near-Far East OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE.


Trade protectionism: Nigeria, China listed among target countries

• Punchng

• 21/06/2010 19:00:00

Global Trade Alert has listed Nigeria, China and Argentina as some of the target countries for trade protectionism.
Reuters reported on Monday that major trading powers were continuing to impose protectionist measures in defiance of a promise by G20 leaders to keep markets open, quoting a report by independent economists.


The report, by GTA, to be issued later this week to coincide with the G20 summit in Toronto, finds that such policies in 2009 turned out much worse than was known at the time of the Pittsburgh summit last September.
Russia, Argentina and Nigeria also feature high in its lists. China, followed by the EU and United States, was the main target.


”The costs of the ineffectual G20 pledges mount quarter by quarter,” Simon Evenett, an economics professor at St. Gallen University in Switzerland and coordinator of GTA, said.
The report finds that nearly 650 protectionist measures implemented since the first crisis-related G20 summit in November 2008, when leaders promised to avoid protectionism, remain in place.


The findings of GTA, which has consistently warned that protectionism is running at a far higher level than governments acknowledge, are not shared by all economists.

The World Trade Organisation, for example, says that the rules-based global trading system, and memories of the 1930s Great Depression that was partly triggered by beggar-thy-neighbour policies, have kept protectionism in check.
In its own report issued last week for the G20 summit, the WTO said governments had largely resisted resorting to trade barriers.


It said the number of new trade measures was falling, with new measures since November 2009 covering only 0.4 per cent of global imports – with a smaller reduction in trade of those goods. From October 2008 to October 2009, trade measures covered one per cent of imports.


GTA on the other hand says this understates the problem.
”The contribution of the WTO has been overstated; its agreements have channelled protectionist pressures into policies not well covered by enforceable rules,” Evenett said.
Ranked by measures such as the number of actions taken, and the number of products, sectors and trading partners affected, GTA found that the European Union was one of the most active protectionists.


The report identifies 22 far-reaching ”jumbo” actions hurting more than 15 G20 trading partners and affecting more than $10bn in trade, that should be a starting point for any G20 exit strategy on trade.


”Few of these jumbo measures are policies for which there are strong WTO rules,” Evenett said.
The policies, covering $1.6tn or more than 10 per cent of world imports, include measures such as China’s export tax rebates and US’ “Buy American” provisions in its stimulus package.
_____________________________________


While Trump rants about far-right wing global Wall Street issues like TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT AND PROTECTIONISM pretending to be working for WE THE PEOPLE-----here we see the back door approach that will occur these several years of a Trump Administration---the same was done under Obama.  Our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones like Baltimore have rigged elections that keep global Wall Street pols in office----here is a raging ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE as with O'Malley----Catherine PUGH.  You have these same kinds of mayors in your neck of the woods.  They are going to KEEP MOVING FORWARD-----so here we see a PUGH partnered with a Governor HOGAN both working for Trans Pacific Trade Pact and global free trade/WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION making those requests to grow more and more and more global corporate campuses and global factories -----

This tag team of pretend left and right wing politics captured to global Wall Street brings this swing allowing these pols to pose right conservative or left social progressive.  THIS IS THE INSTALLATION OF OLD WORLD EAST INDIA GLOBAL CORPORATE PROTECTIONISM.  We cannot have these global corporate campuses in our US cities and still have any US, state, or city sovereign rights.  So, PUGH is continuing the MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE policies pushed by global Wall Street Baltimore Development, Greater Baltimore Development, and global Johns Hopkins and we already know Trump will see these funds come to PORT COVINGTON ET AL.  If Trump wanted to protect US and MAKE AMERICA GREAT----he would be working to shed that $20 trillion in US Treasury bond debt fraud in Federal and state court RIGHT NOW.  Trump knows this debt will bring in the WORLD BANK/IMF and by extension the WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION POLICIES LIKE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT AND THEIR PROTECTIONISM.

For those not knowing BTOP -----that is the ONE WORLD GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY BROADBAND INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDED FOR GLOBAL ONLINE CORPORATIONS THAT WILL KILL INTERNET ACCESS AND ABILITY TO CREATE SMALL TECHNOLOGY BUSINESSES FOR THE 99%.    THAT IS WHY THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE IS PUSHING IT.  ONE GRID.

“The city is eager,” Pugh writes, “to apply for additional federal grant opportunities similar to the $2 million received from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), led by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to help Baltimore realize its goal of having the most robust broadband infrastructure possible.”

Politicsby Mark Reutter8:05 pmDec 12, 201619

Pugh letter asks Trump to back Port Covington and three other projects


Letter hand-delivered to the president-elect contains list of potential “partnerships”


Above: The letter Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh gave to President-elect Donald Trump focused on infrastructure. (Office of the Mayor)


In the letter she hand-delivered to President-Elect Donald Trump at the Army-Navy game on Saturday, Mayor Catherine Pugh praises Trump for his insight into the value of infrastructure improvements and offers Baltimore “as the perfect place to target” such investment.


“You have so rightly spoken at length on the need for both urban renewal and sizable infrastructure investment,” the letter begins.


The mayor then urges Trump “to use the power of your office to support robust investment” in four projects, two of which the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) rejected earlier this year.


These were a $76 million request for a FASTLANE grant for new highway ramps off of Interstate-95 to serve Kevin Plank’s Port Covington development and $155 million to help enlarge CSX’s Howard Street tunnel.
When the Port Covington proposal was turned down last July, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Larry Hogan blamed the Democratic Obama administration for “overlooking Baltimore.”


The application was made by Sagamore Development, the real estate arm of Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, as part of a package of city, state and federal subsidies sought for his proposed $7 billion “new city” at Port Covington.

In August, the City Council and then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake approved $660 million in tax increment (TIF) bond funds for the project.


In her letter to Trump, Pugh says that Port Covington will not realize its full potential without the roadway improvements, which state officials vowed to re-submit to DOT in the next round of competitive FASTLANE applications.


Regarding the Howard Street Tunnel, the mayor argues that raising the height of the tunnel to allow double-stack container trains to serve the Port of Baltimore will create 500 construction jobs and up to 3,000 permanent jobs.


Steering Clear of Controversy

The letter avoids infrastructure projects directed specifically at reviving low-income city neighborhoods, such as eradicating vacant houses, ending food deserts or fixing public schools.


Nor does it touch on such controversial issues as community policing that many think will require federal funds and direction to implement properly. There is no mention of the consent decree under negotiation following the U.S. Department of Justice finding of racial bias and excessive force by the Baltimore Police Department.


Instead, the mayor asks for help to modernize Baltimore’s aging water and sewer systems through “federally funded State Revolving Loan funds, tax-exempt revenue bonds, public-private partnerships and innovative projects.”

The Trump administration should also help Baltimore with broadband infrastructure, the mayor writes.


“The city is eager,” Pugh writes, “to apply for additional federal grant opportunities similar to the $2 million received from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), led by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to help Baltimore realize its goal of having the most robust broadband infrastructure possible.”


“I look forward to working with you and your Administration on these important matters,” the two-page letter concludes.
Below is the text of the letter, released tonight by the mayor’s office at the request of The Brew:

___________________________________

A nation like US-----a state like Maryland----a city like Baltimore cannot maintain its sovereignty ---cannot be PROTECTIONIST as original founding fathers wanted in protecting American citizens and their ability to own and grow businesses if the MAYORS AND GOVERNORS ARE HANDING ALL OUR US CITY INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT TO GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO BUILD AND CONTROL.
This is what a Baltimore Mayor PUGH and a Maryland Governor Hogan is MOVING FORWARD. Yes, a Trump will hand the US, our states, our cities to WORLD BANK in the coming economic crash staged with massive US Treasury and state municipal bond debt fraud.
THESE ARE THE ISSUES A 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE--WHETHER RIGHT WING OR LEFT WING SHOULD FIGHT IF INDEED WE WANT AMERICAN PROTECTIONISM.

But those 5% to the 1% will get that patronage---they will be made players! Pugh and Hogan's PEEPS ----last call on global 1% needing to PAY-TO-PLAY FOLKS.


 Let's think beyond the next decade or so.

Hogan meets with Trump administration officials

March 17, 2017 Baltimore Sun

Gov. Larry Hogan met with three members of President Donald Trump's cabinet Wednesday pressing to prevent cuts to the state's health care access and to win funding for major transportation projects, the governor's aides said.

The meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in Washington came a day before the House of Representatives plans to vote on the Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a program that could reduce the federal money Maryland receives for expanding Medicaid access.

Hogan spokesman Doug Mayer said it was the governor's fifth direct appeal to Price. He said the popular Republican was leaving it up to the state's congressional representatives to lobby their colleagues on Capitol Hill.

"The message is the same," Mayer said. "We want to protect our Medicare waiver, we want to protect the level of funding that we have, and we don't want to see people lose their health care."
Four Democratic members of Congress visited Annapolis Monday to urge Hogan to speak more forcefully about the ways Maryland relies on provisions of the Affordable Care Act targeted for repeal.


While in Washington, Hogan was also scheduled to meet with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to press for his top transportation priority: a $155 million federal grant to help defray the $445 million cost of expanding the Howard Street Tunnel in Baltimore.


The railroad tunnel, built in the 1890s, cannot accommodate freight trains carrying shipping containers stacked two high. Officials say it creates a bottleneck that slows the movement of freight out of the port of Baltimore, and inhibits the port's growth.

The governor also planned to press for four other top projects: widening Interstate 81 in Western Maryland, building new I-95 access to the Port Covington development in Baltimore, replacing the American Legion Bridge that carries traffic on I-495 between Maryland and Virginia northwest of the District of Columbia, and plans for a high-speed, magnetic-levitation train between Baltimore and Washington.


The governor also talked with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson about a program to help people with student debt buy homes and another to demolish vacant houses in Baltimore.

ecox@baltsun.com
twitter.com/ErinatTheSun

'Stop Calling Cronyism Protectionism'

We can see capitalism working in our communities so let's look at these terms locally before showing how distorted global Wall Street has made our US economy---DELIBERATELY.  When immigrants come to America they usually congregate into community helping one another build business, find housing, gain wealth.  It is not a coincidence that a China Town has almost nothing but Chinese businesses----small businesses, regional businesses.  Today black citizens are saying they need to press for more concentration of black businesses in black communities helping each other find housing, gain wealth.  Both cases are setting the stage for PROTECTIONISM.

White communities are not exclusive but have that same concentration.  These communities open to others because white citizens have that stability and economic strength and can be less PROTECTIONIST.

PROTECTIONISM is vital in maintaining a local, core economy no matter the socioeconomic measure.  Where the US has always had global markets it was after FDR and the Great Depression that empire-building laissez-faire started gaining steam.  If your goal is to create MONOPOLIES as Wall Street and right wing pols moved forward then MONOPOLIES ARE PROTECTIONIST.  Creating economic policy that kills a competitor and makes it impossible for small businesses to grow is PROTECTIONIST.  Who pushed MONOPOLY? RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS----WHO ARE THE ONES ALWAYS SHOUTING AGAINST PROTECTIONISM?  RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS.

The statement above STOP CALLING CRONYISM PROTECTIONISM is the response from citizens REALLY wanting a FREE MARKET economy in US.  Once you allow MONOPOLY ----cronyism is right behind because wealth and power continue to grow.

While PROTECTIONISM does not harm in our local communities----CORPORATE MONOPOLY does harm free market.  PATRONAGE ECONOMY comes as a result of too much wealth and power cronyism as in Baltimore City and PATRONAGE is an economic policy designed for cronyism and PROTECTIONISM of that 1%.

Below we see how US economy became crony and a monopoly-----CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and empire-building global market policies like NAFTA.  The right wing always paints LABOR as being the one to hate NAFTA but anyone wanting free market and a healthy local economy would hate NAFTA.



'CHACE: Jobs like Bertha's, he says, were leaving the United States. Because of this rule, they went to Mexico and Central America rather than China. And also because of this rule, places like Parkdale had built-in customers. The U.S. textile negotiator on NAFTA, Ron Sorini, he says that without this rule, you'd have no NAFTA, because senators in the textile-making South would not have let it through Congress.
RON SORINI: If we had not committed to negotiate a yarn-forward rule of origin, we wouldn't have gotten NAFTA, and we wouldn't have had the World Trade Organization'.

And all the offshoring of US corporations and jobs was tied to PROTECTIONISM---







The Secret Protectionism Buried Inside NAFTA

December 26, 20134:02 AM ET
Heard on Morning EditionZoe Chace


The Secret Protectionism Buried Inside NAFTA

In order to get the North American Free Trade Agreement signed 20 years ago, a specific trade-off was made. The trade-off would not protect U.S. jobs from moving overseas.


DAVID GREENE, HOST:


Now NPR's Zoe Chace, from our Planet Money Team, reminds us about one industry that played a big role in NAFTA's passage: men's underwear.


ZOE CHACE, BYLINE: Now you're used to the labels: made in Mexico, made in China, made in Bangladesh. But back in the '80s, when they were first talking about NAFTA, about half of American clothing was made in America, by people like this.

BERTHA MARR: Graduated from the eighth grade, then went straight on in to working at Fruit of the Loom.
CHACE: Bertha Marr sewed Fruit of the Loom's most popular product: men's boxer briefs.

MARR: I did one thing.

CHACE: What was it?

MARR: It was that little - well, I'm afraid to say it on the phone.

(LAUGHTER)
MARR: It was that little flap that goes right up the front of it.

CHACE: It was a good job, sewing the fly of men's underwear. Bertha said she made about $100 a day. And the big fear was, when it came to NAFTA, that good manufacturing jobs like Bertha's would leave the United States and go to Mexico. Presidential candidate Ross Perot characterized the fear most memorably in a 1992 debate.

(SOUNDBITE OF DEBATE)
ROSS PEROT: Pretty simple: If you're paying 12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay $1 an hour for labor, there will be a job-sucking sound going south.

CHACE: And that's what happened to Bertha's job. Here's Fruit of the Loom's current president, Rick Medlin.

RICK MEDLIN: To be competitive, we had to move those high-labor-content jobs offshore.

CHACE: Specifically to Mexico and Central America.

MEDLIN: NAFTA was the start, and CAFTA came along later.

CHACE: The economic idea is this: Casualties like Bertha are for the greater good. Some people lose their jobs, but we sell more stuff to Mexico and Canada, which is good for business, and our clothes are cheaper overall. But in order to get this deal signed into law, there was a specific tradeoff that was made, a tradeoff that's sort of the opposite of what free trade is: a restriction that had everything to do with the men's boxer brief.

The restriction didn't save Bertha. It saved the people who did the step just before Bertha.

DAN NATION: We're the largest textile company in this hemisphere, we believe.

CHACE: This is Dan Nation, CEO at Parkdale, headquartered in North Carolina. What Parkdale does, is it takes cotton and spins it into yarn.

NATION: I think we may be the largest yarn spinner in the world. We're certainly one of the largest. You never quite know in China.

CHACE: Now, yarn looks to you and me like thread. The little lines you see in your cotton clothes, that's yarn. Yarn is what your underwear is made of, and yarn is at the center of this restriction that made NAFTA possible. The restriction is this: You can make men's boxer briefs in Mexico, send them here duty-free, but you can't use yarn made in China.

In order to get the duty-free deal, you have to use yarn produced in the NAFTA region. This is called the yarn-forward rule of origin. It means everything in the underwear-making process. Yarn forward has to be done in the region. Again, Rick Medlin, the president of Fruit of the Loom.

MEDLIN: The real caveat that has allowed us to be competitive with Asia is the yarn forward rule.

CHACE: Jobs like Bertha's, he says, were leaving the United States. Because of this rule, they went to Mexico and Central America rather than China. And also because of this rule, places like Parkdale had built-in customers. The U.S. textile negotiator on NAFTA, Ron Sorini, he says that without this rule, you'd have no NAFTA, because senators in the textile-making South would not have let it through Congress.

RON SORINI: If we had not committed to negotiate a yarn-forward rule of origin, we wouldn't have gotten NAFTA, and we wouldn't have had the World Trade Organization.

CHACE: Yarn forward became the price of admission to get U.S. free trade deals done. The irony here is that despite the whole purpose of the free trade deal to have importers bring in clothes for free as long as they do this one thing, it turns out it's a lot of paperwork. So lots of importers say, I'm just going to bring it in from China and pay the duty. Despite NAFTA, China is the number one supplier of clothes to the United States. Zoe Chace, NPR News.
_________________________________________

Trump comes to office after these few decades of PROTECTIONISM in US caused by ignoring US anti-monopoly laws and killing our free market US economy and is now a right wing Wall Street pol shouting against PROTECTIONISM.   Make no mistake----having US Foreign Economic Zone policies that only allow EXPORT MANUFACTURING is PROTECTIONISM.

When the global 1% want to grow their market share they define PROTECTIONISM differently than WE THE PEOPLE.  This is why we know Trump and our global Wall STreet Clinton/Obama neo-liberals are up to KNOW GOOD FOR THE 99% of citizens.

Trump is POSING RIGHT CONSERVATIVE in shouting FOR PROTECTIONISM and he will in no way stop TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT moving massive global corporate campuses to MONOPOLIZE our US city economies.  

TPP IS PROTECTIONISM FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.

Why Attacking Free Trade Is Great Politics and Bad Economics

Roger Lowenstein
Jan 23, 2017


If Donald Trump cracks down on trade, he will not be the first politician to fly in the face of economic wisdom, only the loudest. As Dani Rodrik of Harvard said famously, on no other issue do politicians and economists disagree so much as they do on trade.
You can expect to see a lot of that disagreement in the news this week. On Sunday, Trump announced his intentions to begin renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement as soon as possible. He may also issue an order announcing the U.S.'s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
He is not, as we've said, the first politician to defy the logic of free trade. But now we have evidence that politicians do not really believe in protectionism. They only act as if they do.


The evidence emerges from two studies of American politics conducted by a group of Italian economists. The first, published in 2014, examined the timing of protectionist (that is, anti-free trade) votes by U.S. senators. The second, hot off the press, looked at the timing of trade disputes launched by U.S. Presidents.
The studies, which appeared in the Journal of International Economics reached a similar conclusion. To generalize: American politicians care very much about restricting trade as they approach re-election, and care very little about it at other times.

It has long been known that America’s Senate is less protectionist (i.e., more likely to favor trade deals) than the House. The usual explanation was that senators, representing larger territories, took a broader view.
But Paola Conconi, Giovanni Facchini and Maurizio Zanardi discovered that only certain U.S. senators were less protectionist. Which senators? Precisely those basking in the relative comfort of the first four years of their terms.

“Policymakers’ Horizon and Trade Reforms:

The Protectionist Effect of Elections,” examined 29 final roll-call votes on trade liberalization between 1973 and 2005, involving a total of 267 senators. It revealed that senators serving out the final two years of their terms were significantly more protectionist. In other words, once a senator’s political longevity was reduced to that of a House member, he or she started voting like a House member.


There were only two classes of senators who did not become more protectionist: those who had announced a decision to retire, and those holding ultra-safe seats. “Close to election, the incumbent politicians manipulate regular government decisions,” the authors concluded. Indeed, various senators who voted pro-trade on some occasions never supported trade liberalization during their last two years.


Does the premise of vote-seeking trade hawks hold true for the executive branch? Hillary Clinton’s switcheroo on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she vigorously endorsed as Secretary of State and vigorously denounced when campaigning for President, suggests that it does.


Five economists (including two of the authors from the earlier study) have now put meat on the bones. Remember when Barack Obama, while on a campaign swing through Ohio, which is home to many auto parts makers, initiated a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization alleging that China was unfairly subsidizing automobile-part exports? That was filed less than two months before Election Day, 2012. George W. Bush filed a similar dispute against the European Union in 2004, alleging that the EU unfairly subsidized Airbus (a competitor of Boeing), just a month before Election Day.

Were these sudden conversions to protectionism, respectively 44 and 45 months into Presidential terms, a coincidence? Assuredly not, according to the evidence presented in the second study, the pointedly titled “Suspiciously Timed Trade Disputes.” As the authors elaborate, “Our results confirm that U.S. presidents are more likely to initiate WTO disputes during the last year of their first term”—and that such disputes disproportionately involve politically sensitive industries in states that are up for grabs. They did not find any pattern during Presidents’ second terms, when they no longer faced reelection.


Trump, who has the swing states Ohio and Michigan, among others, to thank for winning the election, took office amid a blur of threats to clamp down on trade via tariffs of as much as 45% on China and 35% on Mexico, and via social-media bullying (witness his tweets against the auto industry and Carrier). Economists, with surprising near-unanimity, believe that either approach would damage America’s economy.

In brief, protection restricts consumer choice, raises prices (for all), dubiously involves the government in picking economic winners and losers, and shelters inefficient firms. It will boost the rate of inflation—the sleeper economic issue, it will be seen, of the Trump tenure—and ultimately depress U.S. exports by triggering retaliatory tariffs from our onetime friends. Policies that lead to a depression in Mexico or China (the U.S.’s second- and third-biggest export market, respectively) will hardly be good news in Akron or Flint. An extreme protectionist policy could even provoke a world-wide recession. In the long term, trade nurtures peace, tariffs excite international suspicions and bellicosity.

Pollsters say protectionism is good politics because the few people whose jobs may be affected care very much, whereas the scores of millions whose standard of living is improved by trade are not particularly aware of it. This misbegotten argument for restricting trade would similarly argue for curtailing Amazon, Walmart, or Uber. The benefits of lower prices and enhanced consumer choice that innovative companies have delivered to millions of consumers have, for sure, hurt employees in selected industries. That’s the tradeoff for progress in a capitalist society.


In reality, protecting America from China makes no more sense than protecting Ohio from Indiana, or protecting Barnes & Noble from Silicon Valley, or protecting any industry from the lower costs delivered through greater efficiencies, including through automation. It’s understandable that voters are slow to grasp the fact. The benefits of trade are dispersed and appreciable only over time. They also are significant. Imagine how depressed the citizens of Ohio, or of any state, would become in 20 years if its citizens could buy only products manufactured in-state, and never trade with people in other states or other lands. Insulation would lead to isolation, depressing not only their economy but also their civilization.

But as we now know, thanks to the Italian studies politicians do grasp these facts. They or the more honest among them recognize that trade barriers are a patent medicine for the masses, a god that has failed. Will Trump and the protectionist bloc in Congress put the squeeze on trade all the same? There is a word that describes politicians pushing popular (in the short run) policies that they know to be harmful to their constituents. It is called demagoguery.

__________________________________________

Yes, America was founded on a revolution against MONOPOLY AND PROTECTIONISM.    Wait-----it was a revolution FOR PROTECTIONISM. 

Again, we must look broadly to understand from where an article is coming.  The colonial EAST INDIA CORPORATION tied to the England 1% had indeed a monopoly and was protected against competition both from colonists building local industry AND from other nations bringing products.

THIS WAS MONOPOLY AND PROTECTIONISM AND THIS IS EXACTLY TO WHERE MOVING FORWARD US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE POLICIES TAKE THE US AGAIN.

So, a GLOBAL CORPORATE TRIBUNAL OF THE GLOBAL 1% created policies saying EAST INDIA CORPORATION could be a monopoly and protectionism was fine just as Trans Pacific Trade Pact does today.

Meanwhile, LOCALLY in America's communities the 99% of citizens were shouting FOR PROTECTIONISM from that pesky global corporation killing any ability of American small business growth.  America passed laws protecting the US economy against MONOPOLIES AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS by installing PROTECTIONIST POLICIES.


'Thus the American Revolution was to some extent a war over industrial policy, in which the commercial elite of the Colonies revolted against being forced into an inferior role in the emerging Atlantic economy. This is one of the things that gave the American Revolution its exceptionally bourgeois character as revolutions go, with bewigged Founding Fathers rather than the usual unshaven revolutionary mobs'.

The same OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE and KINGS AND QUEENS tied to secret societies are behind CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA pushing the US back to colonial economics. WE THE PEOPLE the 99% must think from what perspective these public policy discussions come----the far-right wing global Wall Street CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA are only coming from a right wing extreme wealth extreme poverty so these terms are the opposite to what is good for the 99%. This happens because Democratic voters allow a far-right wing Clinton neo-liberalism capture our people's left social progressive party which is REALLY FREE MARKET AND PROTECTIONIST FOR AMERICAN BUSINESSES.

THE BLOG
09/12/2010 12:25 am ET | Updated May 25, 2011 America Was Founded as a Protectionist Nation
By Ian Fletcher

Contemporary American politics is conducted in the shadow of historical myths that inform our present-day choices. Unfortunately, these myths sometimes lead us terribly astray. Case in point is the popular idea that America’s economic tradition has been economic liberty, laissez faire, and wide-open cowboy capitalism. This notion sounds obvious, and it fits the image of this country held by both the Right, which celebrates this tradition, and the Left, which bemoans it. And it seems to imply, among other things, that free trade is the American Way. Don’t Tread On Me or my right to import.


It is, in fact, very easy to construct an impressive-sounding defense of free trade as a form of economic liberty on the basis of this myth. Unfortunately, this myth is just that: a myth, not real history. The reality is that all four of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore were protectionists. (Even the pseudo-libertarian Jefferson came around after the War of 1812.) Historically, protectionism has been, in fact, the real American Way.


This pattern even predates American independence. During the colonial period, the British government tried to force its American colonies to become suppliers of raw materials to the nascent British industrial machine while denying them any manufacturing industry of their own. The colonies were, in fact, the single biggest victim of British trade policy, being under Britain’s direct political control, unlike its other trading partners. The British knew exactly what they were doing: they were happy to see America thrive, but only as a cog in their own industrial machine. As former Prime Minster William Pitt, otherwise a famous conciliator of American grievances and the namesake of Pittsburgh, once said in Parliament,

If the Americans should manufacture a lock of wool or a horse shoe, I would fill their ports with ships and their towns with troops.
Thus the American Revolution was to some extent a war over industrial policy, in which the commercial elite of the Colonies revolted against being forced into an inferior role in the emerging Atlantic economy. This is one of the things that gave the American Revolution its exceptionally bourgeois character as revolutions go, with bewigged Founding Fathers rather than the usual unshaven revolutionary mobs.


It is no accident that after Independence, a tariff was the very second bill signed by President Washington. It is also no accident that the Constitution — which notoriously does not authorize a great many things our government does today — explicitly does give Congress the authority “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.” (Article I, Section 8.) This fact drives flag-draped libertarians crazy, but there it is.


Protectionism’s first American theorist was Alexander Hamilton — the man on the $10 bill, the first Treasury Secretary, and America’s first technocrat. As aide-de-camp to General Washington during the Revolution, he had seen the U.S. nearly lose due to lack of capacity to manufacture weapons. (France rescued us with 80,000 muskets and other war materiel.) He worried that Britain’s lead in manufacturing would remain entrenched, condemning the United States to being a producer of agricultural products and raw materials.

In modern terms, a banana republic. As he put it in 1791:


The superiority antecedently enjoyed by nations who have preoccupied and perfected a branch of industry, constitutes a more formidable obstacle than either of those which have been mentioned, to the introduction of the same branch into a country in which it did not before exist. To maintain, between the recent establishments of one country, and the long-matured establishments of another country, a competition upon equal terms, both as to quality and price, is, in most cases, impracticable. The disparity, in the one, or in the other, or in both, must necessarily be so considerable, as to forbid a successful rivalship, without the extraordinary aid and protection of government.


Hamilton’s policies came down to about a dozen key measures. In his own words:

1. “Protecting duties.” (Tariffs.)
2. “Prohibition of rival articles or duties equivalent to prohibitions.” (Outright import bans.)
3. “Prohibition of the exportation of the materials of manufactures.” (Export bans on raw materials needed for industrialization here at home.)
4. “Pecuniary bounties.” (Export subsidies, like those provided today by the Export-Import Bank and other programs.)
5. “Premiums.” (Subsidies for key innovations. Today, we would call them research and development tax credits.)
6. “The exemption of the materials of manufactures from duty.” (Import liberalization for industrial inputs, so some other country can be the raw materials exporter and we can industrialize.)
7. “Drawbacks of the duties which are imposed on the materials of manufactures.” (Same idea, by means of tax rebates.)
8. “The encouragement of new inventions and discoveries at home, .and of the introduction into the United States of such as may have been made in other countries; particularly those, which relate to machinery.” (Prizes for inventions and, more importantly, patents.)
9. “Judicious regulations for the inspection of manufactured commodities.” (Regulation of product standards, as the USDA and FDA do today.)
10. “The facilitating of pecuniary remittances from place to place.” (A sophisticated financial system.)
11. “The facilitating of the transportation of commodities.” (Good infrastructure.)



Hamilton set forth his case in his Report on Manufactures, submitted to Congress in 1791. Perhaps the most startling thing about his suggested policies is how modern they are: few people realize that the R&D tax credit was first proposed in 1791!


Due in large part to the domination of Congress by Southern planters, who favored free trade, Hamilton’s policies were not all adopted right away. It took the War of 1812, which created a surge of anti-British feeling, disrupted normal trade, and drastically increased the government’s need for revenue, to push America firmly into the protectionist camp. But when war broke out, Congress immediately doubled the tariff to an average of 25 percent. After the war, British manufacturers undertook one of the world’s first cases of predatory dumping, whose purpose was, in the words of one Member of Parliament, to “stifle in the cradle, those rising manufactures in the United States, which the war had forced into existence.” In reaction, the American industrial interests that had blossomed because of the tariff lobbied to keep it, and had it raised to 35 percent in 1816. The public approved, and by 1820, America’s average tariff was up to 40 percent.


Fast-forward a few years. Gloss over a number of important tariff-related political struggles, such as the South Carolina Nullification Crisis of 1832, one of the precursors of the Civil War, in which South Carolina tried to reject a federal tariff. There was a brief free trade episode starting in 1846, coinciding with the aforementioned zenith of classical liberalism in Europe, during which America’s tariffs were lowered. But this was followed by a series of recessions, ending in the Panic of 1857, which brought demands for a higher tariff so intense that President James Buchanan—the last free-trade president for two generations—gave in and signed one two days before Abraham Lincoln took office in 1861.


Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and most of the other great names from American history were all protectionists. Protectionism was, in fact, Lincoln’s number two issue after slavery. As he put it in 1847,
Give us a protective tariff, and we will have the greatest nation on earth.

Revealingly, the only major exception to America’s protectionist consensus was the antebellum South, because free trade is the ideal policy for a nations that actually wants to be an agricultural slave state. An economy founded on slave-based agriculture has no hope of achieving competitive advantage in anything else, as slaves have proven unsuitable for industrialization since the time of Ancient Rome. Because the tariff was the main source of federal revenue in those pre-income tax days, the South also bore a disproportionate share of the nation’s tax burden. No wonder it was in favor of free trade—which the Confederate constitution eventually mandated.


Back when protectionism was American policy, it enjoyed a broad popular consensus. Only the left- and right-wing extremists of the day dissented. Extreme right wing Social Darwinists like William Graham Sumner—who published a fuming book in 1885 entitled Protectionism, the Ism That Teaches That Waste Makes Wealth—saw protectionism as a subsidy for the incompetent and an interference with the divine justice of the free market and the survival of the fittest. At the other extreme, Karl Marx, who was alive in those days and keenly watching American capitalism, wanted to see American capitalism break down and therefore favored free trade for its destructive potential.

Unfortunately for Marx, this was the golden age of American industry, when America’s economic performance surpassed the rest of the world by the greatest margin. It was the era in which the U.S. transformed itself from a promising mostly agricultural backwater, pupil at the knee of European industry, into the greatest economic power in the history of the world.

What happened to America’s long protectionist tradition? In the end, America only seriously turned away from protectionism as a Cold War gambit to prop up capitalist economies abroad and tie them to the U.S. Geopolitics trumped domestic economics.


Ironically, our old protectionist playbook for economic development is the same one, in many respects, that China and other nations are using against the United States today. Back when we were the ascending economic power in the late 19th century, it was Britain that complained about “unfair trade!” They were right, of course—but given that nobody forced free trade upon them, it was their own fault. Today, having forgotten our own history, we can’t even recognize the game being played against us, let alone figure out how to counter it. We will continue to pay a high price in lost jobs and declining industries until we wise up.

_________________________________________

Trump and Republicans are at it again trying to confuse their right conservative Republican base shouting for PROTECTIONISM  while working for global corporations and monopolies to take our US cities and economy.

Clinton global Wall Street neo-liberals are doing this as well.  No one has worked harder to block the import of competitive PHARMA, TIMBER et al than CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS. They allowed the complete capture of our US economy to global corporations and monopolies, created the cronyism in our local city and state Democratic Committees, built the patronage non-economy structure all to assure no local US economy grew in US cities that were not global corporate campuses.

We posted that MERCATUS was that global Wall Street neo-liberal outlet writing this article.  Why is all of the above OK with Mercatus but protectionism in imports from Canada not OK. 

ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE GLOBAL CORPORATE TRIBUNAL REQUIRES ALL FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES AROUND THE WORLD HAVE THE SAME TRADE LAWS FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.

So again we see PROTECTIONISM defined in a way that protects global corporations not our local US economies.

BOTH RIGHT WING REPUBLICAN AND LEFT DEMOCRAT ARE CAPTURED BY THAT SAME EAST INDIA GLOBAL CORPORATION AND GLOBAL 1% WANTING TO RETURN TO COLONIAL ECONOMIC POLICY.


'Stop Calling Cronyism Protectionism


Donald J. Boudreaux
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Uncle Sam’s scheme to punitively tax Americans who buy low-priced lumber from Canada is yet another instance of what is commonly called “protectionism.” The term, of course, refers to the protection from foreign competition that tariffs and other import restrictions bestow upon politically powerful domestic producers. Yet “protectionism” – with the sweet sound of the verb “to protect” – is far too kind and inaccurate a word for this policy'.

Institutes for Justice is that right wing public policy outlet silent on these few decades of MONOPOLY, CRONYISM, creating protectionism in our US cities for global corporations. Now they are on the PROTECTIONIST band wagon----we need to ask WHY? The answer is---MOVING FORWARD TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT which is hyper-protectionist for global corporations against our local economies.

We would read this thinking----THIS GROUP IS WORKING TO PROTECT WE THE PEOPLE---when they are actually working for those pesky GLOBAL EAST INDIA CORPORATION AND ROYALS.


Center for Judicial Engagement  

  |    July 30, 2015
Evan Bernick


Assistant Director of the Center for Judicial EngagementCould the government prohibit LeBron James from playing professional basketball simply to put more money in the pockets of less talented athletes? Absolutely, said the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a surprising — and appalling — decision last week upholding a nakedly anticompetitive restriction on non-dentist teeth-whiteners in Connecticut. The decision deepens a split between the federal circuits concerning the constitutionality of economic protectionism — a split that cries out for resolution by the Supreme Court.


In 2011, the Connecticut Dental Commission issued a ruling that only licensed dentists were permitted to provide certain teeth‐whitening procedures. Non-dentist teeth-whiteners were threatened with up to $25,000 in fines and five years in jail per customer. Tasos Kariofyllis and Steve Barraco, co-owners of Sensational Smiles LLC, brought suit, arguing that this prohibition (like similar prohibitions in other states) does nothing to promote the state’s legitimate interests in public health and safety; instead, the prohibition is plainly designed to protect dentists from having to compete with cheaper, more convenient non-dentist teeth-whiteners. The parties agreed that only one rule applied to Sensational Smiles — a rule stating that only licensed dentists can shine an LED lamp at the mouth of a customer during a teeth-whitening procedure. These lights are no more powerful than a household flashlight and it is perfectly legal to make these lights available for customers to position in front of their own mouths.

Writing for himself and another judge on the Second Circuit panel, Senior Judge Guido Calabresi conceded that the would-be teeth-whiteners “forcefully argue[d] that the true purpose of the Commission’s LED restriction is to protect the monopoly on dental services enjoyed by licensed dentists.” However, he concluded that a “simple preference for dentists over teeth-whiteners” on the government’s part would be a “rational” justification, even if the challenged rule was neither meant to nor actually did anything to protect public health. “[E]ven if the only conceivable reason for the LED restriction was to shield licensed dentists from competition,” explained Calabresi, the rule would stand.


Judicial review of economic regulations is a sham under such an approach. As recited by Judge Calabresi, the default rule in constitutional cases–the so-called “rational basis test” — requires judges to determine whether there is a “rational relationship between… legislation and a legitimate legislative purpose.” The Supreme Court has made plain that legislative classifications must be supported by “legitimate” ends that are “independent” of mere political will to impose those classifications. The Court has consistently affirmed that Americans have a constitutional right to earn an honest living. Even in its most deferential rational basis cases, the Court has always required some assertion, however patently pretextual and insincere, of a public-spirited purpose for burdening the right to earn a living–some public-oriented end that is distinguishable from a bare desire to harm the politically powerless or benefit the politically powerful. As Judge Christopher Droney observed in his concurrence, to say that the court is inquiring into whether the government is pursuing a “legitimate” end is “disingenuous” if any reason — even one that is indistinguishable from pure political will — is sufficient.


Remarkably, this is not the first time that a federal court of appeals has endorsed naked economic protectionism as a constitutionally legitimate government interest. In Powers v. Harris (2004), the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that a state could forbid non-funeral directors from selling caskets simply to give state-licensed funeral directors a lucrative monopoly on that trade. Judge Deanell Tacha quipped that “while baseball may be the national pastime of the citizenry, dishing out special economic benefits to certain in-state industries remains the favored pastime of state and local governments.”


By contrast, in St. Joseph Abbey v. Castille (2013) and Craigmiles v. Giles (2002), the Fifth and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeal displayed the kind of judicial engagementrequired to ensure that any restrictions on the right to earn a living are justified by legitimate government ends. Both the Fifth and Sixth Circuits have rejected the notion that naked protectionism is constitutionally legitimate. Confronted with facts nearly identical to those in Powers — that is, state laws forbidding non-funeral directors from selling caskets–both courts engaged in impartial scrutiny of the evidentiary record to determine whether the licensing schemes at issue were justified by legitimate health or safety interests and concluded, correctly, that they were not. There is thus a “circuit split” prime for Supreme Court review, squarely presenting a question of fundamental importance to ordinary Americans across the nation–whether their right to earn an honest living can be extinguished by entrenched incumbents whose lobbying power they cannot match.

The answer to that question is a resounding “no.” The Second Circuit and Tenth Circuits’ endorsement of rent-seeking is flagrantly at odds with our Constitution’s basic premises. Founding-era jurists used the example of legislation that took from A and gave to B without any public-spirited justification as a paradigmatic example of illegitimate legislation. Such legislation, the Supreme Court recognized in Calder v. Bull (1798), is not law at all–it is a mere exercise of force, indistinguishable from the act of a robber or a bandit. It is high time the Court clarified that theft by government of a right held sacred by the Framers and critical to ordinary Americans’ peaceful pursuit of happiness will not be tolerated.

___________________________________________
Trans Pacific Trade Pact is written to end all that PROTECTIONIST policy our FOUNDING FATHERS installed to protect and grow our American economy.....indeed from CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and their trade deals almost every protection for our US economy is gone.  This is why our US cities have stagnant economies---why our local community economies are dead---and yes, it was Obama and Clinton neo-liberals pushing TPP as hard overseas and  in Congress as they could.  They want to keep our US economies dead.

'Trade officials met in Hawaii in late July with hopes of reaching a final agreement, but the talks broke down over issues that have bedeviled a potential pact from the beginning, including the removal of protectionist agricultural policies'.

We are already seeing in our US cities where global corporate campuses are the only development---all our public agencies are controlled by global corporations---what WE THE PEOPLE 99% need is PROTECTIONISM-----policy that keeps MONOPOLY AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS at bay.  Who works hardest for global Wall Street killing our local US economies?  All of our Baltimore City pols ----Baltimore Maryland Assembly pols, all the global Wall Street Baltimore Development and Greater Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations ----those pesky 5% to the 1% who turn around and pretend they CARE ABOUT COMMUNITIES, JOBS, GROWING SMALL BUSINESS----like THE URBAN LEAGUE----

These global corporate campuses create new businesses we are told----NO, THEY BUILD SUBSIDIARY businesses tied to the global corporations pretending to be local or regional when they are not.

East India Company: The Original Too-Big-to-Fail Firm - Bloombergwww.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-03-12/east-india-company-the-original-too-big-to-fail-firm Mar 12, 2013 ... In the U.K., the East India Company's extraordinary rise and fall have ... ban on Indian calicoes, and it was behind this protectionist wall that the ... the right to export the tea itself to Britain's American colonies. The arrival of this controversial corporation inflamed a flagging protest against Britain's taxes on tea.





 The PROTECTIONIST policy in TPP is the laws stating there can be no local laws protecting local businesses and economies---THOU SHALT NOT PASS ANY LOCAL LAWS HARMING GLOBAL CORPORATE PROFITS. This is what global Wall Street and national media with those 5% players will say to confuse WE THE PEOPLE that TPP is good because it is PROTECTIONIST ---


The Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Explained

By KEVIN GRANVILLEMAY 11, 2015

PhotoA container wharf in Tokyo. Credit Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Like a huge container ship pushing its way into port, the trade pact known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership has dropped anchor in Washington. The document is weighty and secret, stretching to perhaps 30 chapters. It took 10 years of talks to take shape, and it would set new terms for trade and business investment among the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations — a far-flung group with an annual gross domestic product of nearly $28 trillion that represents roughly 40 percent of global G.D.P. and one-third of world trade.



Trade officials met in Hawaii in late July with hopes of reaching a final agreement, but the talks broke down over issues that have bedeviled a potential pact from the beginning, including the removal of protectionist agricultural policies.



Talks will resume in the future, but the failure to reach a settlement is a setback for President Obama. In June, he successfully overcame opposition from Democrats to win trade promotion authority: the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress. Once negotiators complete the trade pact, he would need to convince Congress — his fellow Democrats, in particular — to approve the trade deal. The latest setback means the ratificatication fight will likely be in 2016, a presidential election year, raising the degree of difficulty.



The debate in Congress, whenever it takes place, would put all the elements of the trade pact under scrutiny. It would be the final step for United States adoption of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most ambitious trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s.

Why the Pact Is So Divisive


Supporters say it would be a boon for all the nations involved, that it would “unlock opportunities” and “address vital 21st-century issues within the global economy,” and that it is written in a way to encourage more countries, possibly even China, to sign on. Passage in Congress is one of President Obama’s final goals in office, but he faces stiff opposition from nearly all of his fellow Democrats.


Opponents in the United States see the pact as mostly a giveaway to business, encouraging further export of manufacturing jobs to low-wage nations while limiting competition and encouraging higher prices for pharmaceuticals and other high-value products by spreading American standards for patent protections to other countries. A provision allowing multinational corporations to challenge regulations and court rulings before special tribunals is drawing intense opposition.
Why This, Why Now?The pact is a major component of President Obama’s “pivot” to Asia. It is seen as a way to bind Pacific trading partners closer to the United States while raising a challenge to Asia’s rising power, China, which has pointedly been excluded from the deal, at least for now.


It is seen as a means to address a number of festering issues that have become stumbling blocks as global trade has soared, including e-commerce, financial services and cross-border Internet communications.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Countries
Canada
$577
United States
Japan
$194
Mexico
Vietnam $45
$532
Brunei $0.2
Malaysia $46
Singapore
$47
Peru
$14
Australia
$36
Chile
$24
Total goods traded with the United States in 2015
New Zealand $8
Imports plus exports, not including services, in billions of dollars


Census Bureau

By The New York Times


There are also traditional trade issues involved. The United States is eager to establish formal trade agreements with five of the nations involved — Japan, Malaysia, Brunei, New Zealand and Vietnam — and strengthen Nafta, its current agreement with Canada and Mexico.


Moreover, as attempts at global trade deals have faltered (such as the World Trade Organization’s Doha round), the Trans-Pacific Partnership is billed as an “open architecture” document written to ease adoption by additional Asian nations, and to provide a potential template to other initiatives underway, like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.


What Are Some of the Issues on the Table?

Tariffs and Quotas

Long used to protect domestic industries from cheaper goods from overseas, tariffs on imports were once a standard, robust feature of trade policy, and generated much of the revenue for the United States Treasury in the 19th century. After the Depression and World War II, the United States led a movement toward freer trade.



Today, the United States and most developed countries have few tariffs, but some remain. The United States, for example, protects the domestic sugar market from lower-priced global suppliers and imposes tariffs on imported shoes, while Japan has steep surcharges on agricultural products including rice, beef and dairy. The pact is an attempt to create a Pacific Rim free-trade zone.


Environmental, Labor and Intellectual Property Standards United States negotiators stress that the Pacific agreement would seek to level the playing field by imposing rigorous labor and environmental standards on trading partners, and supervision of intellectual property rights.


Data Flows The United States wants the Pacific trade pact to address a number of issues that have arisen since previous agreements were negotiated. One is that countries agree not to block cross-border transfers of data over the Internet, and not require that servers be located in the country in order to conduct business in that country. This proposal has drawn concerns from some countries, Australia among them, that it could conflict with privacy laws and regulations against personal data stored offshore.



Services A big aim of the Pacific pact is enhancing opportunities for service industries, which account for most of the private jobs in the American economy. The United States has a competitive advantage in a range of services, including finance, engineering, software, education, legal and information technology. Although services are not subject to tariffs, nationality requirements and restrictions on investing are used by many developing countries to protect local businesses.


State-Owned Businesses United States negotiators have discussed the need to address favoritism often granted to state-owned business — those directly or indirectly owned by the government. Although Vietnam and Malaysia have many such corporations, the United States has some too (the Postal Service and Fannie Mae, for example). The final agreement may include terms that seek to insure some competitive neutrality while keeping the door open to China’s future acceptance of the pact.


Why All the Secrecy?

The office of the United States Trade Representative has said that “negotiators need to communicate with each other with a high degree of candor, creativity and mutual trust. To create the conditions necessary to successfully reach agreements in complex trade and investment negotiations, governments routinely keep their proposals and communications with each other confidential.”



But previous trade agreements were shared more openly and, despite the secrecy efforts, portions of the document have been leaking out, through WikiLeaks and other organizations.


Why Isn’t China In on the Talks?

China has never expressed interest in joining the negotiations, but in the past has viewed the pact with concern, seeing a potential threat as the United States tries to tighten its relationship with Asian trading partners. But lately, as the talks have accelerated, senior Chinese officials have sounded more accepting of the potential deal, and have even hinted that they might want to participate at some point. At the same time, the deal provides China some cover as it pursues its own trade agreements in the region, such as the Silk Road initiative in Central Asia.

United States officials, while making clear that they see the pact as part of an effort to counter China’s influence in the region, say they are hopeful that the pact’s “open architecture” eventually prompts China to join, along with other important economic powers like South Korea.


The Shadow of Nafta, and the Debate in Washington


Nafta, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, helped lead to a boom in trade among the United States, Mexico and Canada. All three countries exported more goods and services to the other two, cross-border investments grew, and the United States economy has added millions of jobs since then. But of course not all those trends were attributable to Nafta, and the benefits were not equal: The United States had a small trade surplus with Mexico when the pact was signed, but that quickly became a trade deficit that has widened to more than $50 billion a year. Critics of Nafta also point out that job growth in the United States does not account for the loss of jobs to Mexico or Canada; the A.F.L.-C.I.O. contends about 700,000 United States jobs have been lost or displaced because of Nafta.


Nafta was a significant victory for President Clinton after a difficult congressional battle, where he won support from just enough fellow Democrats to ensure passage. The votes were 234 to 200 in the House, and 61 to 38 in the Senate.
President Obama may yet win that kind of outcome. Working with Republican leadership in the House and Senate, he gained final approval for trade promotion authority, a critical step that allows the White House to present the trade package to Congress for a straight up-or-down vote, without amendments.


But the tortuous legislative process further soured relations with many fellow Democrats, as well as unions and progressive groups, who vehemently oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Many Democrats said the president would have to address their concerns over labor and environmental standards and investor protections when he returns to Congress seeking approval of the trade deal.

_______________________________________
WE THE PEOPLE must remember that these global corporations being brought back to US are not US----they are the same as the EAST INDIA CORPORATION. These massive corporations are owned by that global 1% empire-building and do not tolerate lost market share. Those same OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE----MERCHANTS OF ASIA----MERCHANTS OF NEAR-FAR EAST are those on boards and those wanting protection from any US business or citizen interest that may take from its profit. These are not fair and balanced US business ethics corporations---they are that raw, empire-building corporate raider.
When our US cities like Baltimore are allowed to be one massive group of global corporate campuses----under PROTECTIONISM of Trans Pacific Trade Pact----there will be nothing but PATRONAGE non-economies for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE. Baltimore is already trapped in these failed economic policies---please make sure as we fight to get rid of them that your global Wall Street pols are not PULLING THE WOOL OVER YOUR EYES!
WE NEED THE PROTECTIONIST POLICIES PUT IN PLACE BY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS IN ORDER TO REBUILD OUR LOCAL ECONOMIES---SMALL, REGIONAL US BUSINESSES.

This is why our US ECONOMY is filled with LYING, CHEATING, STEALING, NO MORALS OR ETHICS. NO US RULE OF LAW, NO GOD'S NATURAL LAW----and we have that 5% to the 1% thinking they are PLAYERS and will push all this as they are heading under the bus---------

'East India Company: The Original Too-Big-to-Fail Firm - Bloomberg

Mar 12, 2013 ... In the U.K., the East India Company's extraordinary rise and fall have ... ban on Indian calicoes, and it was behind this protectionist wall that the ... the right to export the tea itself to Britain's American colonies. The arrival of this controversial corporation inflamed a flagging protest against Britain's taxes on tea'.

Rather than having a developed nation, broad free market economy fueled by workers earning enough to consume and live a quality of life ---we really want to go back to the DARK AGES.

The East India Company: The original corporate raiders

For a century, the East India Company conquered, subjugated and plundered vast tracts of south Asia. The lessons of its brutal reign have never been more relevant

The Mughal emperor Shah Alam hands a scroll to Robert Clive, the governor of Bengal, which transferred tax collecting rights in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the East India Company. Illustration: Benjamin West (1738–1820)/British Library William Dalrymple


Wednesday 4 March 2015 00.59 EST Last modified on Thursday 11 May 2017 07.31 EDT


One of the very first Indian words to enter the English language was the Hindustani slang for plunder: “loot”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word was rarely heard outside the plains of north India until the late 18th century, when it suddenly became a common term across Britain. To understand how and why it took root and flourished in so distant a landscape, one need only visit Powis Castle.

The last hereditary Welsh prince, Owain Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, built Powis castle as a craggy fort in the 13th century; the estate was his reward for abandoning Wales to the rule of the English monarchy. But its most spectacular treasures date from a much later period of English conquest and appropriation: Powis is simply awash with loot from India, room after room of imperial plunder, extracted by the East India Company in the 18th century.


There are more Mughal artefacts stacked in this private house in the Welsh countryside than are on display at any one place in India – even the National Museum in Delhi. The riches include hookahs of burnished gold inlaid with empurpled ebony; superbly inscribed spinels and jewelled daggers; gleaming rubies the colour of pigeon’s blood and scatterings of lizard-green emeralds. There are talwars set with yellow topaz, ornaments of jade and ivory; silken hangings, statues of Hindu gods and coats of elephant armour.

The latest in our audio long reads examines how, for a century, the East India Company conquered, subjugated and plundered vast tracts of south Asia. The lessons of its brutal reign have never been more relevant.


Such is the dazzle of these treasures that, as a visitor last summer, I nearly missed the huge framed canvas that explains how they came to be here. The picture hangs in the shadows at the top of a dark, oak-panelled staircase. It is not a masterpiece, but it does repay close study. An effete Indian prince, wearing cloth of gold, sits high on his throne under a silken canopy. On his left stand scimitar and spear carrying officers from his own army; to his right, a group of powdered and periwigged Georgian gentlemen. The prince is eagerly thrusting a scroll into the hands of a statesmanlike, slightly overweight Englishman in a red frock coat.


The painting shows a scene from August 1765, when the young Mughal emperor Shah Alam, exiled from Delhi and defeated by East India Company troops, was forced into what we would now call an act of involuntary privatisation. The scroll is an order to dismiss his own Mughal revenue officials in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, and replace them with a set of English traders appointed by Robert Clive – the new governor of Bengal – and the directors of the EIC, who the document describes as “the high and mighty, the noblest of exalted nobles, the chief of illustrious warriors, our faithful servants and sincere well-wishers, worthy of our royal favours, the English Company”. The collecting of Mughal taxes was henceforth subcontracted to a powerful multinational corporation – whose revenue-collecting operations were protected by its own private army.



It was at this moment that the East India Company (EIC) ceased to be a conventional corporation, trading and silks and spices, and became something much more unusual. Within a few years, 250 company clerks backed by the military force of 20,000 locally recruited Indian soldiers had become the effective rulers of Bengal. An international corporation was transforming itself into an aggressive colonial power.


Using its rapidly growing security force – its army had grown to 260,000 men by 1803 – it swiftly subdued and seized an entire subcontinent. Astonishingly, this took less than half a century. The first serious territorial conquests began in Bengal in 1756; 47 years later, the company’s reach extended as far north as the Mughal capital of Delhi, and almost all of India south of that city was by then effectively ruled from a boardroom in the City of London. “What honour is left to us?” asked a Mughal official named Narayan Singh, shortly after 1765, “when we have to take orders from a handful of traders who have not yet learned to wash their bottoms?”

It was not the British government that seized India, but a private company, run by an unstable sociopath

We still talk about the British conquering India, but that phrase disguises a more sinister reality. It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath – Clive.

_________________________________

There is very little a Pat Buchanan and a left social progressive would agree but there were REAL right wing conservatives in the Republican Party before Bush/Reagan.  There still are only their voice has been silenced by global Wall Street Bush neo-cons just as our left social progressive voice has been silenced by Clinton/Obama global Wall Street neo-liberals.

The top priority for 99% of citizens left or right is to rebuild these PROTECTIONIST laws as originally designed---for our US small, regional, and US corporate economic market as we rebuild our US cities.

THIS SHOUTS----NO TO GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND FACTORIES IN US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----THEY ARE MONOPOLIES---

'Buchanan on the history of U.S. protectionism: “Behind a tariff wall built by Washington, Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln, and the Republican presidents who followed, the United States had gone from an agrarian coastal republic to become the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen — in a single century. Such was the success of the policy called protectionism that is so disparaged today.”'

CATO is of course that far-right wing global Wall Street think tank.  CATO will not tell us the ROARING 20s economic crash and Great Depression were deliberate, willful, done with malice fueled by fraud and government corruption just as today just to REBUILD our US economic policy.  FDR set the stage for empire-building deregulating some of those original TRADE PROTECTIONS ---of course dismantlement soared these few decades.

Commentary

The Truth about Trade in History

By Bruce Bartlett

This article appeared on freetrade.org on July 1, 1998.The ongoing globalization of economic life leaves many Americans nervous and suspicious. Pat Buchanan has played to this anxiety with his book, The Great Betrayal, a root-and-branch rejection of free trade in favor of a “new nationalism.”

In this series, Cato Center for Trade Policy Studies scholars take issue with much of what Buchanan writes, and offer an alternative perspective to Buchanan’s protectionist analysis.


Buchanan on the history of U.S. protectionism: “Behind a tariff wall built by Washington, Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln, and the Republican presidents who followed, the United States had gone from an agrarian coastal republic to become the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen — in a single century. Such was the success of the policy called protectionism that is so disparaged today.”

Pat Buchanan contends that the United States grew economically strong and prosperous because of trade barriers. But America has experienced several phases in its trade history. It is more accurate to say that the country grew in spite of import restrictions.


From Colony to Republic


British trade policy toward the American colonies was mercantilistic. The mother country expected to gain materially from all colonial trade. The Navigation Acts, as noted earlier, generally required that all colonial trade be conducted on British ships manned by British sailors. Also, certain goods had to be shipped to Great Britain first before they could be sent to their final destination. The country’s mercantilist policies were a major burden on the colonies.2 In that way, British protectionism was a significant cause of the Revolution.


Having achieved independence, however, many Americans advocated protectionist policies similar to those they had earlier condemned.3 Alexander Hamilton, the principal advocate of import restrictions, based his proposals on the alleged needs of infant industries. As he wrote in his “Report on Manufactures” (1791):


The superiority antecedently enjoyed by nations who have preoccupied and perfected a branch of industry, constitutes a more formidable obstacle … to the introduction of the same branch into a country in which it did not before exist. To maintain, between the recent establishments of one country, and the long-matured establishments of another country, a competition upon equal terms, both as to quality and price, is, in most cases, impracticable. The disparity … must necessarily be so considerable, as to forbid a successful rival ship, without the extraordinary aid and protection of government.4


The First Wave of Protectionism


Although Congress adopted the first tariff in 1789, its principal purpose was to raise revenue. Rates went from 5 percent to 15 percent, with an average of about 8.5 percent. However, in 1816 Congress adopted an explicitly protectionist tariff, with a 25 percent rate on most textiles and rates as high as 30 percent on various manufactured goods. In 1824, protection was extended to goods manufactured from wool, iron, hemp, lead, and glass. Tariff rates on other products were raised as well.


That first wave of protectionism peaked in 1828 with the so-called Tariff of Abominations. Average tariff rates rose to nearly 49 percent. As early as 1832 Congress began to scale back tariffs with further reductions enacted the following year. In 1842, tariffs were again raised; but by 1846 they were moving downward, and further lowered in 1857. Following the 1857 act, tariffs averaged 20 percent.5


Failed Tariff Policies


Economist Frank Taussig, in a thorough examination of those tariffs, found that they did nothing to promote domestic industry. “Little, if anything, was gained by the protection which the United States maintained” in the first part of the 19th century, he concluded. That finding considerably questioned the validity of the infant industry argument. “The intrinsic soundness of the argument for protection to young industries therefore may not be touched by the conclusions drawn from the history of its trial in the United States, which shows only that the intentional protection of the tariffs of 1816, 1824, and 1828 had little effect,” Taussig said.6


Thus, the early experience of the United States confirms the weakness of the idea that protection can aid infant industries. In practice, so-called infant industries never grow competitive behind trade barriers, but, instead, remain perpetually underdeveloped, thus requiring protection to be extended indefinitely. As Gottfried von Haberler put it:


Nearly every industrial tariff was first imposed as an infant-industry tariff under the promise that in a few years, when the industry had grown sufficiently to face foreign competition, it would be removed. But, in fact, this moment never arrives. The interested parties are never willing to have the duty removed. Thus temporary infant-industry duties are transformed into permanent duties to preserve the industries they protect.7

It is also important to note that the adverse effects of tariffs in 19th century America were more than offset by the economic activity that constituted the western expansion across the continent. Some 20 million immigrants came to the United States in that century. Also, much economic growth came from transportation, farming, mining, and construction of infrastructure. In effect, the United States was a giant, continental-size free-trade zone, from the Atlantic to the Pacific — the equivalent of the distance from Madrid to Moscow.
Figure 1:

Customs Duties as a Share of Imports



Source: The Department of Commerce



Following the Civil War, some tariff liberalization occurred, mainly assuming the form of exempting items from duties, rather than reducing tariff rates. As Figure 1 illustrates, until that time, duties had covered a large percentage of imports, as shown by the close relationship between the tariff rate on all imports and that on dutiable imports only. But after the Civil War, those rates began to diverge sharply.


Turn-of-the-Century Tariffs


In the election of 1888, Republicans called for tariffs to protect American manufacturing. Benjamin Harrison’s defeat of Democrat free trader Grover Cleveland led to passage of the McKinley tariff in 1890. An interesting aspect of the 1890 debate over the tariff is that protectionists abandoned any pretense that high tariffs were needed to protect infant industries. Even mature industries, they argued, needed protection. They further argued that high tariffs were needed to reduce the Treasury’s surplus. They understood that sufficiently high rates would so discourage imports that tariff revenues would fall.8


Protectionist tariffs remained the bedrock of economic policy of the Republican Party for the next 20 years. Indeed, Republicans were so intent on passing the Payne-Aldrich tariff in 1909 that President William Howard Taft supported the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution creating a federal income tax as the political price for Democratic support of the tariff.9 That has to have been one of the worst deals in history — a lose-lose situation if ever there was one.


The Underwood tariff of 1913, passed early in the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, liberalized trade somewhat. But as soon as the Republicans reassumed power after World War I, they raised tariffs again. The Fordney-McCumber tariff of 1922 generally increased tariff rates across the board. However, it also gave the President power to raise or lower existing tariffs by 50 percent.


Deepening Depression


The infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 was the last outrage inflicted by the Republican protectionists. Rates on dutiable imports rose to their highest levels in over 100 years. Increases of 50 percent were common and some rates went up 100 percent. Table 1 indicates how much tariffs in creased during the 1920s as a result of both the Fordney-McCumber and Smoot-Hawley tariffs. A recent analysis estimates that the Smoot-Hawley tariff, on average, doubled the tariffs over those in the Underwood Act.10


Figure 2:
Collapse of World Trade Following Smoot-Hawley



Source: League of Nations


Economists and historians continue to debate how important the Smoot-Hawley tariff was in causing the Great Depression.

MASSIVE WALL STREET FRAUD AND GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION DURING ROBBER BARON ROARING 20S BROUGHT THE GREAT DEPRESSION--NOT TRADE TARIFFS.


11 Whatever the degree, the effect certainly was adverse and the tariff was certainly bad policy. As Figure 2 indicates, world trade virtually collapsed following passage of the Smoot-Hawley tariff. Thus, if that tariff was not the single cause of the Great Depression, it certainly made a bad situation worse.



The Free-Trade Path

Politically, at least, in the long term the memory of the Smoot-Hawley tariff has kept Americans committed to a free-trade policy. For more than 60 years, a guiding principle of U.S. international economic policy has been that tariffs and other trade barriers should be reduced, that trade wars must be avoided at all costs, and that the best way to achieve those goals is through multilateral negotiations. Thus, the United States took the lead in establishing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that reduced global tariffs in the decades following World War II, and spearheaded major GATT rounds of multilateral trade liberalization, including the Kennedy Round, Tokyo Round, and Uruguay Round.

In recent years, the free-trade consensus has begun to weaken. One must look back to 1929 to find protectionist rhetoric as heated as that commonly heard today. Throughout most of the postwar era, protectionists were embarrassed to call themselves protectionists. Today, however, prominent politicians such as Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan and Senator Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) wear the label proudly.12 Yet protectionist policies have not been the source of America’s economic strength. And American policy, fortunately, remains largely directed toward free trade.

___________________________________________


What a BALTIMORE SUN tied to global Wall Street Baltimore Development will not tell us is this-------the Port of Baltimore was privatized by then Governor O'Malley to a global hedge fund which was enriched by the massive subprime mortgage loan frauds including in Baltimore. What was tax revenue coming to state and city of several hundred million was signed away ----reduced to some millions as the public becomes the RENTER. This means that global hedge fund is now raking in billions---and as the Port grows with building of GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND GLOBAL FACTORIES----that few billion in profits will soar---none of it reaching our city coffers.
Then global Wall Street Baltimore Development, the global hedge fund, and global Johns Hopkins handed management of our Port to a CHINESE CORPORATION because of course Asian Foreign Economic Zones have those global corporations managing overseas ports. So, this global corporations is earning millions. But wait---what about the trucking and rail----oh, well all transportation coming to these US ports are owned by global trucking and BUFFETT billionaire rail corporations because our independent truckers can no longer compete.
As we see here our once strong, well-paid LONGSHOREMEN UNION is being sliced and diced as global labor pool will soon move in taking those jobs.
THIS IS WHAT US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE POLICIES DO TO LOCAL FREE MARKET ECONOMIES. This Port of Baltimore is NOT PUBLIC----our tax revenue maintains for free infrastructure for all those global corporations.
GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS ---CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA--NOW TRUMP

'Dockworkers' union threatens one-day strike on US East Coast ...
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/02/27/dock-f27.html
Feb 27, 2017 ... Tens of thousands of longshoremen are poised to shut down ports from ... ports along the East and Gulf coasts to protest “government interference” in ... On the East Coast, terminals in Norfolk, Baltimore and Jersey City, New' ..


US Constitutional trade tariffs and monopoly laws do not allow for these economic structures in our US cities.

 US Foreign Economic Zones as EXPORT ONLY MANUFACTURING----will have these cargo ships bringing materials for global factories----taking away products to export overseas----nothing going on in Baltimore communities except restaurants, hotels, resorts

Port of Baltimore sets first-quarter record with 2.56 million tons of general cargo
Colin CampbellContact Reporter

The Baltimore Sun



The Port of Baltimore set a first-quarter record in 2017, handling more than 2.56 million tons of general cargo at its public marine terminals in the first three months of the year — a five percent increase from the same quarter last year, officials said.


Increases in the number of cars and containers drove the overall bump in traffic at the port, officials said. Cars were up six percent year-over-year, and containers were up eight percent, which officials attributed to the massive container ships that can now reach Baltimore through the expanded Panama Canal.

A record 538,567 containers crossed the public piers last year.
The port has led the country in shipping cars for the past six years, and it has been named the most efficient U.S. port for the third year running. It averaged 71 container moves per hour per berth, faster than any other major American port.

The port generates about 13,650 direct jobs, and is indirectly linked to 127,000 jobs across the state, officials said.

We will continue discussion on economic policy looking at how to rebuild our US city/county local economies in the midst of an orchestrated, deliberate, willful, and done with malice massive US Treasury and state/local municipal bond frauds in the tens of trillions of dollars all designed to move that revenue to global corporate tribunal development.

Bringing the GEO-POLITICAL POLICY discussion back to our communities----both right wing and left wing 99% of citizens must understand those far-right wing global Wall Street CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA are lying when they say to the right----KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS IS BAD-----saying to the left----laissez-faire neo-liberalism creates jobs and businesses----

THEY ARE BOTH LYING TO ADVANCE EXTREME WEALTH AND EXTREME POVERTY.

Local economics for thousands of years of capitalism has been a form of BOTH.  Keynesian economics creates stability for local and national governance-----laissez-faire allows for global market trading.   There has always been global market trading---it is not bad when YOU REGULATE, PROVIDE OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY AND DON'T ALLOW MONOPOLY TO KILL LOCAL ECONOMIES as CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA did.

We will discuss the new global Wall Street POSING term-----PROTECTIONISM.  This term is already being corrupted just as the far-right global Wall Street corrupted the terms FREE MARKET and TRADE DEFICIT.

Remember, the US has a trade deficit because global Wall Street pols sent all our US corporations to China to then RETURN PRODUCTS to US as IMPORTS.  It is not Chinese corporations creating a trade deficit---it is our own US corporations manufacturing overseas creating those import vs export deficits.  Who shouts loudest against these corrupted trade deficit standards?  Right wing Republicans and left wing Democrats both parties captured by global Wall Street---

THEY ARE LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING FROM OUR LOCAL COMMUNITIES AND ECONOMIES.

What is 'Trade Deficit'

Trade deficit is an economic measure of a negative balance of trade in which a country's imports exceeds its exports. A trade deficit represents an outflow of domestic currency to foreign markets.


BREAKING DOWN 'Trade Deficit'

Economic theory dictates that a trade deficit is not necessarily a bad situation because it often corrects itself over time. However, a deficit has been reported and growing in the United States for the past few decades, which has some economists worried. This means that large amounts of the U.S. dollar are being held by foreign nations, which may decide to sell at any time. A large increase in dollar sales can drive the value of the currency down, making it more costly to purchase imports.

As we said----the NEW WORLD ORDER will see Foreign Economic Zones where global corporations move from Asian and Latin American nations to African and Western nations.  Those Asian nations having hosted global corporations these several decades will now simply fill these economic zones with their own corporations.  Chinese Foreign Economic Zones filled with global corporations from other nations will now be filled with Chinese corporations.   The Chinese global 1% KNOW the US Foreign Economic Zones are being built with global corporate campuses and global factories to EXPORT-----NOT IMPORT.  Remember, US Foreign Economic Zone policies do not allow for manufacturing that is retail---it only allows for manufacturing that is EXPORT.  This is why for several decades we heard nothing about a TRADE DEFICIT and now we hear nothing but TRADE DEFICIT.


As long as US Foreign Economic Zone policy states the US zones are EXPORT MANUFACTURING ONLY----we cannot rebuild our local US economies. THIS IS THE TOP 99% ECONOMIC POLICY PRIORITY.

Is the United States slipping down a path toward protectionism?

By David Page, opinion contributor - 02/15/17 12:00 PM EST


In the weeks since inauguration, the new administration has struck a more protectionist tone. Trump’s White House seems less convinced by the benefits the United States has accrued from globalization and comparative advantage through international trade. Rather, it has focused on the continuing decline of manufacturing jobs.


Peter Navarro, head of the new National Trade Council, has theorized that open trade—particularly with China—has impacted U.S. manufacturing job prospects. His views appear to have found resonance with others in the administration. This has created uncertainty over the direction that U.S. trade policy will take.


In his first month, President Trump has already pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), voiced concerns over currencies in China and Japan, and opened negotiations over the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. Navarro has also criticised German trade policy. Yet meetings between President Trump and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which included future trade relations, appeared productive.


Looking ahead, trade relations with Mexico and China appear priorities. In the first instance, Mexican trade relations appear to be wrapped up with the renegotiation of NAFTA. The scale of sought after change here is unknown. However, this process will take some time. Do not expect unilateral protectionist measures while such talks are underway.

The outlook for China is less certain. The administration has loosely talked about currency manipulation. Although China currently breaches only one of the U.S. Treasury Department’s three guidelines for manipulation (and importantly, China has been supporting the value of its currency for around 18 months), we see some risk of this. Yet such a move would be largely symbolic and designed to provoke broader negotiations.  

 
More direct action cannot be ruled out. Broad-based tariffs would risk a comprehensive retaliation from the Chinese authorities that would prove damaging to U.S. economic interests, harming both producers and consumers. A series of targeted-tariffs are more likely. The president enjoys a wide range of executive authority over trade policy that goes largely unchecked by Congress.


The current administration has renewed targeted anti-dumping tariffs on China steel imports, but may go further by pursuing a different approach. Concentrating on sectors that account for significant portions of the U.S.-China bilateral trade deficit and that have had a significant impact on U.S. jobs, as proxied by the scale of import penetration, the electronic and computer sector, as well as the electrical and appliance sector, may face a high risk for targeted tariffs in the future. However, even these measures should be expected to prompt retaliatory action from China, with the risk of further escalation.  

 
The prospects for domestic production do not lie solely with trade policy. Another key element to domestic competitiveness is tax policy. For years, corporate America has called for a more competitive system that does away with worldwide taxation—a practice eschewed by most other OECD economies—and lowers the headline tax rate from the currently uncompetitive 35 percent rate.


House Republicans have proposed a shift to a destination-based, cash flow tax system. This would overhaul of the current system and combine a lower headline corporate tax rate—Republicans argue for 20 percent—with other incentives for investment, including full expensing of capital investment. Proponents state this would modernize the tax system, incentivize investment and underpin domestic competitiveness. This could significantly boost the outlook for U.S. production without recourse to trade policy.
That is before we consider border tax adjustability, which is a mechanism that would exclude U.S. exports and input costs from domestic production from taxation. To proponents of tax reform, a move to a destination-based, cash flow tax system requires measures to prevent base erosion—or an accelerated process of corporate inversions, outsourcing and intellectual property transfers.


Border tax adjustability is proposed as a policy designed to remove incentives for base erosion, which should prove trade neutral. However, the assumption of  trade neutrality requires significant dollar appreciation of 25 percent, which is an unlikely outcome. Without such an appreciation, border tax adjustability would likely have a marked additional impact on the balance of trade beyond any prospective boost that broader tax reforms could provide. Border tax adjustability policies would also likely be considered protectionist by the World Trade Organisation (WTO), due to the unlike tax treatment of domestic and foreign production.  

  
Hence the scale and direction of corporate tax reform remains uncertain for now, although President Trump has promised an announcement over the coming weeks. Some degree of tax reform looks likely, although the scale proposed by the House Republicans now appears ambitious. Progress would be a key development for the competitiveness of domestic manufacturing. As such, the administration might only be in a position to determine trade policy in the light of tax reform.


I remain wary of the new administration’s direction over protectionism, although I acknowledge marked uncertainty in this regard. Direct protectionist measures remain a threat. For 2017, I consider a renegotiation of NAFTA and trade relations with Mexico to be the most likely priorities. I also consider the United States unlikely to strike out with direct tariffs ahead of concluding corporate tax reform measures. Yet there is a likelihood of increased trade tensions. I see the risk of the United States labelling China a currency manipulator. And I consider further risks ahead with the prospect of direct import restrictions or tariff measures, if the administration considers progress towards boosting domestic production inadequate.

________________________________________

As long as US Foreign Economic Zone policy states the US zones are EXPORT MANUFACTURING ONLY----we cannot rebuild our local US economies. THIS IS THE TOP 99% ECONOMIC POLICY PRIORITY.


 As long as global Wall Street 5% to the 1% train our young adults to be global Wall Street 1% followers and NOT COMMUNITY LEADERS this will MOVE FORWARD.

As we see here in Baltimore every higher education institution that should be training our young adults to be community leaders are indeed tied to GLOBAL WALL STREET 1% EMPIRE-BUILDING----and they train our young adults to be FOLLOWERS OF GLOBAL WALL STREET.  Whether black, white, or brown citizen---this is what the 99% must change.  Global Johns Hopkins is raging global 1% IVY LEAGUE-----our HBCUs sadly are tied to global IVY LEAGUE working for global 1%----and even our local U of B----has appointed leaders tied to global Wall Street and yes, all leadership training is tied to GLOBAL WALL STREET 1% POLICIES.

If the goal for the 99% is changing US Foreign Economic Zone policies from EXPORT MANUFACTURING ONLY to local manufacturing with retail sales of products---how are we going to make that policy goal when all our youth are being trained to work for GLOBAL WALL STREET 1%?

These same global Wall Street institutions control all of our K-12 after-school programs meaning absolutely no training for 99% being leaders is happening.

THIS SAME DYNAMIC IS HAPPENING IN YOUR NECK OF THE WOODS----IF THE 99% DOES NOT BREAK THIS HOLD BY GLOBAL WALL STREET ON OUR HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS WE CANNOT BUILD OUR LOCAL ECONOMIES FOR WE THE PEOPLE.


The US Urban League and Greater Urban League are partnered with global Wall Street Baltimore Development and Greater Baltimore Development ---they are those pesky 5% to the 1%------stop allowing these folks to be leaders-----they are simply PLAYERS.

Saturday Leadership Program & Summer Leadership Program

SIGN UP TODAY
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
​
The Greater Baltimore Urban League launched the Saturday Leadership Program in 2013. Each month, 100 Saturday Leadership Fellows from all neighborhoods in Baltimore convene to develop their leadership potential. We hold the sessions at Baltimore colleges. Last year, we met at Coppin State University, Goucher, MICA, Morgan State University, Notre Dame, Sojourner Douglass College, and the University of Baltimore. This year, we are planning sessions at 10 colleges. At the beginning of a Saturday Leadership day, students grades 8-12 meet at the host university at 8:00am for breakfast and are welcomed by a fellow student serving as the morning MC. The students are divided into four groups for the day’s activities, each group named after a notable African American from Baltimore who reflects the day’s theme. The Greater Baltimore Urban League Young Professionals conduct two leadership development sessions. The workshop themes include standard leadership development exercises such as teambuilding as well as themes reflecting the social mission of the Urban League. These two areas, of personal development and community-focused leadership, are integrated into each session’s activities. Students also participate in grade-specific college readiness activities. Following lunch, the host university takes participants on a campus tour. On the weekends between sessions, GBUL organizes field trips and public service activities. Every college visited is on the MTA bus line, and the MTA has donated day passes for each participant for every Saturday. The program is free.

The specific program dates are determined by the colleges, but they will not conflict with any PSAT, SAT, or ACT testing dates or Baltimore City Public Schools vacation dates. The first session is held in September. 

The Saturday Leadership Program is committed to including students of all abilities in our programs. We want to help our students succeed in school, career, college and community life. We provide reasonable accommodations for students of all abilities and we work with families and the community to create an out-of-school program where all of our students can succeed.

WHY SATURDAY LEADERSHIP?
​
We know that our youth have unlimited potential. They can become leaders in their fields and their communities. So why wait to unleash that potential?


BECOME A SATURDAY LEADERSHIP FELLOW

The program is free of charge but heavy in commitment. When a student joins the Saturday Leadership Program, they are committing to attending every session on time for the entire time (8:00 am to 2:30 pm). We welcome students with any G.P.A. who have a desire to develop their leadership potential and are ready to make the serious commitment to attend. Because this commitment is so important, the application requires three signatures: the student, the parent or guardian, and a sponsoring agency. The sponsoring agency can be any program (example: church youth group, tutoring program, sports team, college access program) in which the student is currently participating. The sponsoring agency will verify that the student has excellent attendance (90% or more) in the agency’s program and commits to ensure that the student will attend every Saturday Leadership Session.

The sponsoring agency will select prospective participants from their program and distribute the application to these students. Families completing the application will submit the application to the sponsoring agency and the agency will submit the application to the Greater Baltimore Urban League. We only accept applications submitted by sponsoring agencies. We have 70 spots for new applicants, they are filled first come first served.


SATURDAY LEADERSHIP ACTIVITIES

In previous years, session topics have included:

• community leadership and service
• finding career and academic aspirations
• notable African Americans & notable Baltimoreans
• financial literacy
• scholarships and financial aid in  college
• networking & mock interviews
• Freedom Readers (an Enoch Pratt Free Library collaboration)
• Stress & Time Management
• History Wall
• Public Speaking & Debate
• College Tours and Sessions on College Life (on-campus culture)

Off-Saturday activities give the opportunity for even more activities that fall outside of the typical SLP curriculum. Past Off-Saturday events have included the MLK Day Parade, theatre/dance workshops, an Orioles game, help with resume-writing, college applications and more. 


________________________________________
It is important that each nations' 99% of citizens understand the dynamic of these Foreign Economic Zones.  Where early in US Foreign Economic Zone policies entailed only duties and tariffs----during Clinton/Bush/Obama these FTZ laws were changed making these zones ready for global corporate manufacturing ONLY.  The reason we are seeing NO local manufacturing replacing those that left Baltimore these few decades is the laws surrounding FTZ.

If WE THE PEOPLE want to rebuild our local economies to that same thriving FREE MARKET economy filled with small businesses, regional businesses all competing with corporations in manufacturing and sales----we must GET RID OF US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE POLICIES that allow only GLOBAL MONOPOLIES.

This is for what our global Wall Street Baltimore Development---Greater Baltimore Development---Johns Hopkins works and their 5% to the 1% 'labor and justice' organizations are tied to MOVING FORWARD GLOBAL CORPORATE MANUFACTURING ONLY.  This is why the 5 % to the 1% are filling our US cities with NON-ECONOMIES----NGOS-----and these institution's leadership KNOWS WHAT MOVING FORWARD looks like.  THESE 5% PLAYERS DON'T CARE.

We are watching as global 1% create ANCIENT PHOENICIA while pretending to rebuild our modern US economy.


'SEZs have a long pedigree: the first free-trade zones were in ancient Phoenicia. The first modern one was set up at Shannon airport in Ireland in 1959, but the idea took off in the 1980s after China embraced them. There are now more than 4,000 SEZs (see chart). A study conducted in 2008 estimated that 68m people worked in them. They come in many forms, from basic “export processing zones” to “charter cities”, urban zones that set their own regulations in all sorts of areas that affect business'.  

What each city and county will need as this massive economic collapse occurs is KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS----our government revenue needs to fuel our economic development---but wait!  OBAMA AND CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA created $20 trillion in US Treasury bond debt ILLEGALLY tied to only global corporate campus development---these global Wall Street pols deliberately staged this economic crash so the only RECOVERY will be for those dastardly global 1%. 

THIS IS WHY A $20 TRILLION NATIONAL DEBT WAS ALLOWED TO OCCUR---AND WHY STATES LIKE MARYLAND LOADED WITH MUNICIPAL BOND DEBT---TO KEEP ANY LOCAL ECONOMY FROM BEING REBUILT.

'Debt doesn’t matter? Really? That’s the most irresponsible fiscal notion since the tax-cutting mania brought on by the advent of supply-side economics'.

The Dangerous Notion That Debt Doesn’t Matter


Steven Rattner JAN. 20, 2012


WITH little fanfare, a dangerous notion has taken hold in progressive policy circles: that the amount of money borrowed by the federal government from Americans to finance its mammoth deficits doesn’t matter.


Debt doesn’t matter? Really? That’s the most irresponsible fiscal notion since the tax-cutting mania brought on by the advent of supply-side economics. And it’s particularly problematic right now, as Congress resumes debating whether to extend the payroll-tax reduction or enact other stimulative measures.


Here’s the theory, in its most extreme configuration: To the extent that the government sells its debt to Americans (as opposed to foreigners), those obligations will disappear as aging folks who buy those Treasuries die off.

If that doesn’t seem to make much sense, don’t be puzzled — it doesn’t. Government borrowing is still debt that must eventually be paid off, just as we were taught in introductory economics.

Failing to repay the debt would mean not only the ugliness of default but also depriving the next generation of whatever savings their parents parked in government bonds.


And remember that just a small fraction of Treasuries are owned by individual Americans. Institutions and many foreign entities own the rest and are not about to give up claims that they are owed.

The more realistic alternative of continuing to service that debt offers the unattractive eventual prospect of either higher taxes or sharp cutbacks in government programs, or both.


That problem is greatly compounded by the fact that the $10 trillion of debt that is held by investors represents only a fraction of the federal government’s obligations and ignores an additional $46 trillion of commitments to Social Security and Medicare.


Of course every modern economy both tolerates and benefits from some amount of debt. But the United States has been on a binge, brought on by a toxic mix of spending increases and tax cuts that began with the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s and were later turbocharged by those of President George W. Bush.


The figures are stark. In 1975, government debt per household was roughly equal to half of a typical household’s annual income. Today, it’s 1.7 times. Add entitlements, and the obligations would take a mind-boggling nine years of family income to pay off.


Even deficit hawks like me recognize that with the economy still barely above stall speed, now is hardly the moment for the government to slam on the fiscal brakes, debt or no debt.


So that means there’s no realistic alternative to more debt. But we can reduce the adverse consequences by how we spend this borrowed money. There are two main forms of stimulus: one kind is channeled through tax cuts and then mostly spent, just like a strapped family that puts its monthly expenses onto a credit card. Alternatively, government can direct its resources toward long-term investments that earn a return; think roads and dams but also medical research and education.


At the moment, gridlock grips Washington, and about all that Congress has offered is a two-month cut in the payroll tax, which may help shake the economy out of the doldrums but provides little lasting benefit.
We could just as effectively throw borrowed hundred-dollar bills out of airplanes. About the only worse approach would be nothing at all.


Government’s focus should shift toward investment. To do so, multiple challenges must be overcome.
First, unlike every company in America, the government doesn’t keep its books in a way that highlights these important two categories, investment and consumption. As a result, Congress can’t evaluate the long-term impact of its actions.


Second, the dark shadow of the Tea Party movement has made added spending — the route for most new government investment — taboo.


While public investment may take longer to unleash its positive forces, the case for it is compelling, in part because rising entitlement expenditures have crowded out government’s investment activities.


In the early 1950s, government devoted about 1.2 percent of gross domestic product to infrastructure; by 2010, that amount had fallen to just 0.2 percent. Meanwhile, federal spending on research and development dropped from a high of nearly 2 percent in 1964 to 0.9 percent in 2009.


By contrast, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s much-praised Works Progress Administration spent the equivalent of at least $1.5 trillion over eight years on projects that in New York City alone ranged from building La Guardia Airport to reroofing the New York Public Library to creating a lasting body of literary and artistic work.


I agree that short-term help for the economy combined with long-term deficit reduction is the right direction for budgetary policy.


But we also need to make every dollar of debt matter, and therefore we should be directing our efforts to lifting the economy toward programs that provide long-term benefit, not just a short-term burst of caffeinated energy.

-________________________________________
Before the right wing global Wall Street pols start blaming Obama and Clinton neo-liberals for these $12 trillion in national debt from US Treasury bond fraud----let's be clear the BUSH/CHENEY crew of global Wall Street pols were these same cheerleaders----bringing $4 trillion in national debt from subprime mortgage loan and many other frauds of our US agencies. WE THE PEOPLE MUST DEMAND THESE BOND DEBTS BE VOIDED---DEFAULTED----in order to redirect our local taxation to rebuilding local economies.


 This is the problem and solution for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE.

Yes, we can default on all this US Treasury and state municipal bond debt BECAUSE it was always done ILLEGALLY.  Now, this is why 2016 elections were rigged an fraudulent to assure US mayors and governors were in place who would not DEFAULT----they are global Wall Street 5% of players.  Here in Maryland that is Governor Larry Hogan who ran as a Republican but is that global Wall Street Bush neo-conservative----and in Baltimore that is Catherine Pugh as mayor running as a Democrat but being a far-right wing global Wall Street Clinton neo-liberal.

ANY GROUP THAT IS REALLY LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE WOULD HAVE BEEN SHOUTING THIS THESE SEVERAL YEARS.  WHAT WE HAVE ARE GROUPS CAPTURED BY THAT 5% TO THE 1% MAKING SURE THE 99% DOESN'T KNOW.

This is bad for all US citizens and immigrant citizens----black, white, or brown citizens---right wing or left wing citizens----WAKE UP and STOP MOVING FORWARD.

Krugman is that far-right global Wall Street neo-liberal economist national media pretends feels the pain of 99% WE THE PEOPLE.


'Krugman is trying to argue that because government debt did not hinder private wealth creation we should use government debt to create private wealth. The cart is not even before the horse using this “logic”, as the cart and horse aren’t even on the same road'.

Krugman's Debt Doesn't Matter Mantra------Goes Back To America's Greatest Swindler, Jay Cooke

By Jeffrey P. Snider. Posted On Sunday, February 15th, 2015

With the G-20 recoiling itself back into the same kinds of mistakes made in the 1960’s, leading directly to the Great Inflation, we will have to take into account the other end of that, namely other forms of “stimulus.” With the global economy sinking, and worries about it beginning to resound beyond just inconvenient bears, there is growing official consensus on central banks taking a clearer approach but also that governments need to face up to “austerity.”


Paul Krugman has been leading the critique against what he sees is a disastrous and ignorant deformation against debt. In times like these, which he “predicted” based on too little government spending, Krugman derides fiscal sense as “cold-hearted.”


This misplaced focus said a lot about our political culture, in particular about how disconnected Congress is from the suffering of ordinary Americans. But it also revealed something else: when people in D.C. talk about deficits and debt, by and large they have no idea what they’re talking about — and the people who talk the most understand the least…


People who get their economic analysis from the likes of the Heritage Foundation have been waiting ever since President Obama took office for budget deficits to send interest rates soaring. Any day now!


The above quoted passage was taken from a column he wrote back on New Year’s Day 2012. While it has aged three years, given the global slowdown that was about to take place and the ineffectiveness of monetarism alone to dispel it, his words are being taken increasingly as both prescient and prescriptive. However, the logic behind his anti-austerity agenda is more of a sleight of hand than actual argument.



The primary misdirection lies in that second last sentence of the second paragraph quoted above, “budget deficits to send interest rates soaring.” While that could be a concern under some conditions, that is by no means proof that so much “fee money” isn’t a negative factor. The problem with this government-centric view is that it is government-centric not just to begin with but in every part of the formulation. Governments occupy a unique place in society, by design, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into superpowers:


First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the income subject to taxation.


Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.


Debt isn’t money in the truest sense of the word, but Krugman is right that national debt functions in many ways like currency. But that is taken a step further. This argument isn’t new, in fact it was used many times in the nineteenth century to end fiscal restraint (how well did that work?). Even in the US, in 1865, Jay Cooke wrote a famous pamphlet extolling the virtues of the national debt incurred to fight and complete the Civil War. He made the same argument that Bank of England officials had been making throughout the first half of that century about English colonialism, explicitly that national debt was not debt but actual wealth.


Since taxes are needed to pay off national debt, and taxes represent a government extraction of accumulated wealth, paying off national debt amounts to reducing national wealth – or so it was said. Cooke made the argument as a bond dealer hoping to continue selling government bonds, but the point stuck; so well that Paul Krugman is representing it more than a century and a half later.


But there is still something slightly dishonest about the entire idea, especially in this 21st century expansion. Krugman again:


This was clearly true of the debt incurred to win World War II. Taxpayers were on the hook for a debt that was significantly bigger, as a percentage of G.D.P., than debt today; but that debt was also owned by taxpayers, such as all the people who bought savings bonds. So the debt didn’t make postwar America poorer. In particular, the debt didn’t prevent the postwar generation from experiencing the biggest rise in incomes and living standards in our nation’s history. [emphasis added]



Here he is making the same argument as above, in that incurring a massive national debt hasn’t been an impediment to prosperity. Thus he makes the further supposition that it won’t be because it hasn’t both in the current era and in the past where government borrowing was equally as intensive. But that is the disingenuous part, as it does not represent the primary problem at all.


Maybe government debt did not pose an existential problem to our post-war prosperity, but it didn’t create it either! That seems to be the proper framing of the apparently eternal question about the current economic malaise. Maybe government spending through deficits won’t send interest rates skyrocketing, or fiscal imbalances that will destroy the “dollar” (a laughable assertion where the “dollar” is concerned), but that isn’t the point. Government debt of whatever size fails to create the wealth by which taxes are extracted to repay it, or not – that function is independent and prior.


Krugman is trying to argue that because government debt did not hinder private wealth creation we should use government debt to create private wealth. The cart is not even before the horse using this “logic”, as the cart and horse aren’t even on the same road.


Private wealth creation comes first, and government attention to “aggregate demand”, spending of the sake of spending, has been woefully inadequate because actual wealth is not based on simple transactions. The transactional nature of the economy is incidental to wealth, not its primary focus. Generic spending doesn’t do anything but waste resources, which is anathema to private wealth creation axiomatically in opposition to such short-termism. Waste is unprofitable; wealth is profit.


Unfortunately, these Keynesian mythologies are coming back again as nobody (besides the Chinese, ironically) seems to remember the “stimulus” non-impact of the ARRA (or the serial “stimulus” programs in Japan). Like the G-20 appeal to currency devaluations all over the world (which is impossible because somebody has to appreciate if others depreciate, and the only one that can do that is the “dollar” which everyone hates when it “rises”; circular logic is the only logic here), there can only be statist solutions to these intractable economic problems, especially because those statist solutions make them intractable. The only real alternative and solution is to destroy the status quo entirely, which markets attempted to do in 2008 but were interrupted and then co-opted once more.


Paper wealth isn’t wealth, and government debt isn’t “free money.” There are consequences to both which their proponents never include in the “prospectus.” Orthodox economics has no sense of a balance sheet, only the idea that activity matters; and that any activity in the short run will lead to prosperity in the long run. So we have had a few decades of “any activity” and yet economists are left wondering why the global economy won’t recover and is at the same time so easily susceptible to the slightest negative pressures. Though they hate free markets, they will come to eventually appreciate their absence just as the current economy appreciates and suffers the absence of actual wealth drowned out by religious devotion to the “aggregate demand” falsity.

________________________________________
What the American people have seen these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA is PATRONAGE GOVERNMENT-----where all the wealth and opportunity is moved to the 1% and their 5%-----and our government elections rigged to players and public appointments are as well.  This is what captured a functioning democratic republic locally, statewide, and nationally.  When WE THE PEOPLE allow $20 trillion in US Treasury bond debt stand it will not only be used as an excuse for AUSTERITY against social programs and public trusts ---it will relegate our local economies to global corporate campuses and that global 1% receiving all our tax and public assets while throwing a few million out to non-economies. Baltimore City has had this economy for decades soon to become more extreme in its wealth and poverty if MOVING FORWARD continues.

We must break these $20 trillion bond debts to bring that tax revenue to our cities/counties/states free to develop local small business and small manufacturing business.

IT IS EASY PEASY----AS ALL THAT US TREASURY BOND AND MUNICIPAL BOND DEBT WAS DONE ILLEGALLY AND UNCONSTITUTIONALLY.  JUST SAY NO TO BOND DEBT.

A functioning KEYNESIAN economy with combination free market capitalism with government funding to aid in economic development cannot exist when $20 trillion in bond debt is secured to global 1%.  It creates the most CRONY OF ECONOMIES---IT IS LITERALLY A GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS PLANTATION.

The UK is captured more than the US by that OLD WORLD MERCHANT OF VENICE GLOBAL 1%----but here is a discussion all public universities should have been having these few decades and especially NOW.  Whether those public universities are in Republican states leaning right wing---or in Democratic states leaning left wing.  We must get rid of this PATRONAGE SOCIETY BUILT THESE FEW DECADES OF CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA in order to rebuild real local economies.

PUBLIC APPOINTMENTS TO WHAT ARE NOTHING BUT COMMITTEES ----THIS IS NOT DEMOCRATIC --IT DOES NOT MEET OUR US CONSTITUTIONAL 3 BRANCHES OF GOVERNANCE WITH CITIZENS DETERMINING LEGISLATION.

 

EXPLAIN HOW PUBLIC POLICY IS AFFECTED BY A RELIANCE ON PATRONAGE
 APPOINTMENTS TO THE PUBLIC SECTOR.

WHAT SORTS OF POLICIES ARE DELIVERED? WHAT SORTS ARE NOT?


Polina Panainte-Culeac
University College London, University of London,MSc, Public PolicyFebruary 2012


Patronage appointments' effects on public policy continue to be a debated topic among public management scholars, with no unified position on whether appointees or careerist bureaucrats have the best impact on public management. This essay explores what are these competing viewson the effects of patronage appointments on the public sector. The first part outlines positive effects stressed by scholars which argue the need of increased political responsiveness. The second  part refers to the drawbacks of patronage appointments that result in costly and less efficient  policies. Drawing on the readings, I group these adverse effects into four categories that offer a clearer picture explaining the relationship between patronage appointments and public policy.


Patronage appointments are believed to mostly have a negative impact on public policy, but attempts are made to prove certain positive effects. The neutral competence of bureaucrats, seenas the key to performance in the public sector (Heclo, 1975) has been targeted by criticism seeking to accommodate the need for increased political responsiveness among bureaucrats.William West (2005) claims that 
“ 
 politics and administration are intertwined 
” 
and in order to increase outcomes produced by the public sector there is a need for combining nonpartisan objectivity (characteristic for merit based systems) with responsiveness toward political executives (typical for patronized systems). This view is supported by Bok, Maranto and Moe,which argue that political appointees bring to administration more energy, human capital and higher levels of education than careerists do (Lewis, 2007). They also claim that appointees contribute to a better implementation of their political principals' agenda. Thus responsiveness is the outstanding advantage of patronage, as opposed to careerist bureaucrats, who, according to Dunleavy (1985) tend to make choices based on their own preferences and orientations, thus diverging from the current political agenda. Having political appointees in executive positions may also help mitigate the lack of trust issue that many have in non-elected officials exercising political discretion (West, 2005). The need for responsiveness argument even if conclusive was questioned by David E. Lewis(2007) in his quantitative research on USA agencies performance. He reported that even though responsiveness is important, it does not outweigh advantages careerists have: strategic planning,public management and effective outcomes.Lewis conclusions can be challenged by rational choice theories that describe careerist bureaucrats as oriented to budget-maximizing, bureau-shaping and rent-seeking (Niskanen,1971), which theoretically has enormous implications on how public policy is delivered.Probably, if political appointees would also satisfy the professional criteria, they could satisfy both prerequisites for efficiency: responsiveness and objectivity in decision making. But, this is
only a hypothesis, which may prove right or false and further research is required to see the potential results of such a model of patronage.Till then, Lewis (2007) makes it clear that programs administrated by political appointees get lower results than programs administrated by career bureaucrats. Evans and Rauch (1999)confirm this theory at macro-level, providing evidence in favour of merit based systems. The reasons behind poor performance of patronage appointments and more effects to the public sector are detailed next. I distinguish four categories of effects patronage appointments have: political consequences,institutional consequences, consequences on social policies and consequences on economic development. 


Political consequences


Scholars agree that across democracies and non-democracies political appointments are mainly used by politicians as a method to boost their political support (Remmer, 2007; Lewis, 2007). Even though patronage outcomes depend upon political systems, agency
’
design, culture, level of democracy, a set of political consequences can be widely observed:

 
politicized bureaucracies - where partisanship shapes policy choices;

 
electoral manipulation with a clear advantage of the incumbent politician
–
that useadministrative resources and public institutions as their private tools;

 
fragile political institutions
–
with corrupt judges, MPs and ministers;

 
fragmented society: ''ours'' and ''against us'';

 
defective political system that does not transform political inputs in outputs;

 
mistrust in public institutions.Due to these ends, Remmer (2007), citing Diamond (1998) and Fox (1994) calls patronage a
“
distasteful form of governance fundamentally antithetical to democratic rule
”
.
Institutional consequences 


The main difference between efficient and non-efficient bureaucracies is shelled in the personnel that runs the organisation, and has less to do with other factors (Wilson, 1989). In patronized public sectors politicians do not pay much if any attention to appointees' qualifications and knowledge. Appointed executives do not meet the required skills level and in effect, the public policies delivered are neither efficient, nor effective or economically advantageous.

Appointees' policy choices are not based on evidence and record, but they rather define tasks from political principal's perspective, which may not be in the best interest of the population.Sometimes the interest of political principal can be neglected as easily as public interest,manifesting as a principal
–
agent problem. Due to moral hazard and adverse selection in addition to the high level of discretion appointed managers have, they may tend to shirk the irresponsibilities and act on their own will and interest.Similarly, Lewis (2007) illustrates other adverse effects patronage has on institution' performance. In his research on USA federal agencies, he makes clear that programs administrated by political appointees
“ 
systematically get lower evaluations than programs run by civil service
” 
. The lack of knowledge on how certain agencies work and public management
experience of appointed managers is highlighted as being the reason.Another effect patronage has on institutions is given by disruptions in the implementation of reforms and other long term policies. Moe (1989) too endorses the opinion that politicians and senior appointed bureaucrats have short term objectives and are not preoccupied about economy and efficiency as ends. Thus, the policies delivered are usually short term oriented,symbolic, with little impact.



Consequences on social policy 


Patronage channels public resources to party's networks of supporters and clientele (Remmer,2007). Evidences from 1999 Ghana (Miguel and Farhan, 2004), show that the party in power allocated almost 30% more funding for schools in the areas where it had good results in parliamentary elections of 1996. Similarly, in 2010, in Pakistan, the government protected from floods only districts that paid bribes to state officials, despite the considerable donations from the international community (Quiroz Flores and Smith, 2010). Social spending is correlated with patronage spending and depend on electoral competitions.Social spending increases before elections to expand political support, but decreases after elections, when bigger slices of the public budget are allocated for administrative costs (Remmer,2007).Such policies even though represent a powerful tool for incumbent governments, directly affect the quality of public goods delivered to citizens. That includes the unequal provision of education, health, justice, social security, infrastructure, police, etc. which mainly are delivered to political supporters, and make citizens dependent upon patronage networks.


Consequences on economic development 
 
Most of scholars agree on the adverse impact patronage has on state economy and welfare(Remmer 2007; Rauch and Evans, 2000; Van Biezen and Kpesky, 2007). Corruption and nepotism are often used to characterize the effects of patronage, but a deeper look reveals other associated effects.Patronized public sector is permanently expanding in terms of personnel size and budgetary spending. Expansions take place after each electoral cycle
–
adding up on the existing number of civil servants. Remmer (2007) points out to Argentina
’
s public sector, where until 2001 the public spending exceeded revenue growth, but the government continued to increase personnel spending by increasing provincial employment by 40%. This led to Argentina
’
economic meltdown in 2001.Growth is much dependent on governance, Rauch and Evans (1999) claim. They explored the connection between the quality of the bureaucracy and growth, proving that a bureaucratic system compiling Weber's characteristics determines positive growth, while the supply of patronage varies with poverty and inequality of electorate. A key reason behind this negative connection is that entrepreneurs avoid long term investments in countries with patronized public sector because of the corruption, unpredictable bureaucracy, lack of transparency and reduced accountability.


CONCLUSION


The lack of an agreement in the academic community regarding the effects of patronage on public policy reflects the disproportionate focus on testing hypothesis related to partisanship’s disadvantages, rather than its potential advantages. In my opinion current research looks at a limited number of variables when measures the effects of patronage, introducing consistent bias and leaving space for interpretation whether patronage is the cause or the result of inefficient income distribution, poor education, and democracy level in a particular country.The existent research reveals that patronage appointments to public sector have adverse impact on citizens' lives. In consequence, people face economic insecurity; unemployment, poor services and in many cases poverty. More than that, patronage combined with autocratic systems may exclude people from enjoying
“
pure public
goods”
which are by default non-excludable (as defence, fresh air, protection from disasters). We attest that people’s dissatisfaction with their leadership instigates people to mass protests as the current examples of Middle East revolts, Greece or Russia show.

___________________________________________


Everyone knowing financial policy knew in Bush era not only were US subprime mortgage loan frauds being marketed globally filled with fraud and government corruption---we knew in Europe and to a lesser extent in US SOVEREIGN DEBT FRAUD was soaring. Sovereign debt fraud occurs when a corrupt national leader allows a nation to take on so much debt he/she knows cannot be handled just to send that nation into the hands of the global 1%. This is what Greek and Spanish leaders did during Bush era over in Europe. They wanted to send Greek and Spanish citizens into these WORLD BANK/IMF structures.
Goldman Sachs was identified early on in staging these massive sovereign debt frauds---here we see HIDING THE DEBT----talked about without using the words fraud and government corruption. We all knew Greece was soaked in national debt when their books hid that fact. All of those businesses partnered in sovereign debt contracting and outsourcing were being staged to be LOSERS. Think how many US businesses are tied to US Federal contracting debt as we MOVE FORWARD into an economic collapse with $20 trillion in national debt----just like Greece. You can bet none of that Federal contracting debt will be tied to a global corporation!
THE WORLD KNEW GOLDMAN SACHS COMMITTED BANKING FRAUD----THE WORLD KNEW THOSE PESKY GREEK LEADERS WERE GUILTY OF MALFEASANCE AND CORRUPTION AS THEY WORKED TO MOVE GREECE'S WEALTH TO THOSE OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1%.


Greece should have defaulted on that fraudulent sovereign bond debt ---and would then have been able to control the rebuilding of Greece. Now, if you are right wing believing the mantra of Greece as a social capitalist nation needed to be turned global neo-liberal---then watch as the same comes to your neck of the woods in US.


 The amount of global banking fraud is incredible.


Greek debt crisis: Goldman Sachs could be sued for helping hide debts when it joined euro

Exclusive: A leading adviser to debt-riven countries has offered to help Athens recover some of the vast profits made by the investment bank

• Jim Armitage, Ben Chu


• Friday 10 July 2015 23:15 BST

Goldman Sachs' current headquarters Getty Images

Goldman Sachs faces the prospect of potential legal action from Greece over the complex financial deals in 2001 that many blame for its subsequent debt crisis.

A leading adviser to debt-riven countries has offered to help Athens recover some of the vast profits made by the investment

bank.

The Independent has learnt that a former Goldman banker, who has advised indebted governments on recovering losses made from complex transactions with banks, has written to the Greek government to advise that it has a chance of clawing back some of the hundreds of millions of dollars it paid Goldman to secure its position in the single currency.


The development came as Greece edged towards a last-minute deal with its creditors which will keep it from crashing out of the single currency.

The deal is based on fresh economic reform proposals submitted by Athens which bear a striking similarity to the creditors’ offer rejected by the Greek people in a referendum last Sunday – sparking claims that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has effectively executed a huge U-turn in order to avoid a catastrophic “Grexit”.


Greece managed to keep within the strict Maastricht rules for eurozone membership largely because of complex financial deals created by the investment bank which critics say disguised the extent of the country’s outstanding debts.




Goldman Sachs is said to have made as much as $500m from the transactions known as “swaps”. It denies that figure but declines to say what the correct one is.
The banker who stitched it together, Oxford-educated Antigone Loudiadis, was reportedly paid up to $12m in the year of the deal. Now Jaber George Jabbour, who formerly designed swaps at Goldman, has told the Greek government in a formal letter that it could “right historical wrongs as part of [its] plan to reduce Greece’s debt”.


Mr Jabbour successfully assisted Portugal in renegotiating complex trades naively done with London banks during the financial crisis. His work helped trigger a parliamentary inquiry and cost many senior officials and politicians their jobs. It also triggered major compensation payments by banks to the Portuguese taxpayer.



Mr Jabbour, who now runs Ethos Capital Advisors, has also helped expose other cases including allegations against Goldman Sachs and Société Générale over their dealings with Libya relating to financial transactions that left the country’s taxpayers billions of dollars out of pocket. Both banks deny wrongdoing.


Based on publicly available information, he believes the size of the profit Goldman made on the transactions was unreasonable. Scrutiny and analysis of the documents and email exchanges could give Greece grounds to seek compensation and assess if the deals were executed for the sole purpose of concealing the country’s debts.


Antigone (Addy) Loudiadis

Greece’s membership of the euro gave it access to billions of easy credit which it was then incapable of paying back, leading to its current crisis. Lenders took its euro membership as a stamp of creditworthiness, but the true state of its economy was far less healthy.


Under Ms Loudiadis’s guidance, Goldman swapped debt issued by Greece in dollars and yen for euros which were priced at a historical exchange rate that made the debt look smaller than it actually was. The swaps reportedly made about 2 per cent of Greece’s debt disappear from its national accounts.


The size and structure of the deal enabled the bank to charge a far bigger fee than is usual in swap transactions, and Goldman persuaded Greece not to test the transaction with competitors to ensure it was getting good value for money.

_______________________________________
As this article states---Trump was installed to do just that --default on all that US Treasury bond debt sending all US assets to those bond holders and creditors.  Of course there is a pecking order so the global 1% and global corporations will get all of US assets.

What WE THE PEOPLE across the nation must do LOCALLY is the same-----that municipal bond debt as with the US Treasury debt was not ours in the making----Baltimore simply defaults on all that 30 years and more of bond debt.  Keep in mind-----there is no pretty way out of massive public malfeasance like this ====we are all going to be hurt.  What WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% MUST THINK ABOUT-----is it better to shed debt now and get control of local development----building that local small business economy to recover----or will we hand all to those global 1% who no matter the default by Trump will MOVE FORWARD with all our national, state, and local assets and tax revenue.

If Americans want to maintain US economic structures with whatever version of KEYNESIAN, SUPPLY SIDE, NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS we must say NO TO ILLEGAL SOVEREIGN DEBT.  MOVING FORWARD simply brings old world laissez faire by a global 1% having all our nations' wealth.

THINK NOW ABOUT WHAT A NATIONAL, STATE, AND LOCAL DEFAULT OF SOVEREIGN DEBT WILL LOOK LIKE TO PLAN OUR PROACTIVE RESPONSE!

If a 'labor and justice' organization has not been shouting against all this sovereign debt ---but promoting it----if they do not have that plan for the coming economic crash and default---they are working as that 5% to the 1% wanting to hand all our US, state, and local wealth to those global 1%. This means no sovereign local economy.

 I hear no talk in Baltimore about the debt---about how we will respond to debt----no 99% plan---only a Baltimore City Hall and mayor ready to hand Baltimore to global banking.


Of Course the US Government Will Default on Its Debt


05/09/2016Tho Bishop


Last week Donald Trump set the financial punditry class aflame with his suggestion that the United States may end up asking lenders to take a haircut on its debt obligations. The resulting firestorm created a race to see who could come up with the strongest condemnation of Trump, David Ader of CRT Capital Group told Bloomberg the comments were “stupid and ridiculous,” while Business Insider’s Josh Borro labeled them “insane.” Vox’s Matt Yglesias described the proposal as a threat to “incinerate the world economy.”


While Yglesias is correct that a US default would have major ramifications for the global economy, lost in all this hand wringing is the fact that the damage has largely already been done. As Jim Grant noted in his Time cover article this month, the United States debt situation is far more serious than most "experts" would like to believe. By accumulating a debt that now towers over $19 trillion, the United States government has written a check it will not be able to cash.


Of course the irony here is that many of the same pundits attacking Trump for his comments today are those who have encouraged on the fiscally reckless policies that have led us to this point. For example, The Weekly Standard described Trump’s comments as a “Plan to Destroy the U.S. Economy”, highlighting the pain that Americans would feel from such a move. Of course, this publication was perhaps the loudest cheerleader for the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, which could end up costing taxpayers over 6 trillion dollars, and continues to campaign for further expansion of America’s military presence that currently costs over $700 billion a year. Meanwhile, conservative estimates of the cost of bailing out Wall Street — actions that would still be defended today by most of the mainstream financial class - weighs in at over $3 trillion dollars.



These expenditures, added on to firmly implanted and growing welfare state managed by a political class lacking the courage required to make serious attempts at debt reduction, has always made default, in some form, inevitable. As Congressman Ron Paul (who was discussing the reality of US insolvency during his last presidential campaign in 2012)  was always fond of pointing out, government spending is itself a form of taxation. So while the Weekly Standard is correct that a debt default will hurt the pocketbook of American families, this is an inevitable consequence of the spending it advocated — an insidious form of tax collection, the consequence of electing politicians who followed the publications own advice.



So the real question about an American default has always been less a matter of if, and more a matter of how and when.


While it is still popular to claim that the United States has never defaulted on its debt, this is a myth. The US has been forced to default a couple of times throughout history, the last of which being when Richard Nixon&rsquo closed the gold window. By cutting the ability of foreign governments to redeem US dollars for gold, America was allowed to pay back past debt with devalued fiat money. This form of default has long been a popular option for governments with debt obligations it can’t or won’t honor.



Of course, as Peter Klein wrote last week, even Trump’s suggestion of the US restructuring its debt isn’t the doomsday scenario CNBC talking heads have made it out to be, noting that:



[T]he idea that the US can never restructure or even repudiate the national debt — that US Treasuries must always be treated as a unique and magical "risk-free" investment — is wildly speculative at best, preposterous at worst.



Murray Rothbard himself advocated for outright repudiating the national debt, arguing:

The government is an organization, so why not liquidate the assets of that organization and pay the creditors (the government bondholders) a pro-rata share of those assets? This solution would cost the taxpayer nothing, and, once again, relieve him of $200 billion in annual interest payments. The United States government should be forced to disgorge its assets, sell them at auction, and then pay off the creditors accordingly.


Trump himself has even touched on the possibility of selling of assets held by the Federal government as a form of debt reduction. This solution would have the added benefit of a number of additional benefits, including solving many of the issues that currently exist with the Federal owning of land used by ranchers. Plus, the country as a whole would benefit if Federal bureaucrats were kicked out of the various government buildings that pollute America’s capitol city — perhaps they could follow the lead of the old DC post office and be turned into Trump hotels?



Unfortunately, lost in the media firestorm over Trump’s comments about the debt is the rapid deteriorating hope that The Donald would offer a challenge to the reckless monetary policy that has helped facilitate the US government’s disastrous spending spree. As I touched on last week, Trump, in stark contrast to past comments, praised the work of Janet Yellen and fully endorsed a continuation of the US’s historically low interest rates. Even more troubling, he seemed to endorse some disastrous aspects of Modern Monetary Theory by suggesting that the United States could never default because it could simply print more money.



The ramifications for this are far more dangerous than his pointing out that the government has no real plans to pay back its debt. 
___________________________________________
We wanted to start this week's discussion of protectionism and building our local US economies by first KNOWING WHAT IS COMING.

Any economic policy group not discussing what is coming and being honest about its illegality and DELIBERATE HARM TO WE THE PEOPLE will not offer any good discussions for the future. 

The last article I shared was from a LIBERTARIAN think tank MISES----this article is from a NEO-LIBERAL think tank MERCATUS------both are Austrian folks---can we get economic policy that is AMERICAN?

We wanted to start by showing a far-right wing global Wall Street discussion on WHAT IS PROTECTIONISM.  Remember, the MASTER PLAN of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was to send US corporations overseas these few decades growing wealth and power then bringing them back to US cities deemed FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.  Moving US corporations overseas created the TRADE DEFICIT OF EXPORTS FROM CHINA----so moving global corporations back to US Foreign Economic Zones will create the conditions of MADE IN USA EXPORTS ONLY.  This is what global Wall Street neo-liberals support---and it is PROTECTIONISM.

MADE IN AMERICA TIED TO US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES BECOMES EXPORT ONLY----AND THAT IS PROTECTIONIST.



'The Mercatus Center’s “economic toolkit” draws from the work of Nobel laureates Friedrich A. Hayek, Ronald H. Coase, Douglass C. North, Elinor C. Ostrom, and George Mason University’s own James M. Buchanan and Vernon L. Smith'.

Stop Calling Cronyism Protectionism

Donald J. Boudreaux
Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:


Uncle Sam’s scheme to punitively tax Americans who buy low-priced lumber from Canada is yet another instance of what is commonly called “protectionism.” The term, of course, refers to the protection from foreign competition that tariffs and other import restrictions bestow upon politically powerful domestic producers. Yet “protectionism” – with the sweet sound of the verb “to protect” – is far too kind and inaccurate a word for this policy.


It’s too kind because it masks the reality that the protection given to domestic producers is an attack on domestic consumers. To protect with trade barriers the incomes of some of its subjects, government preys upon the incomes of other of its subjects. (And, by the way, economics is clear that the total value of the incomes lost to such government predation exceeds the total value of the incomes that are protected.)



The word “protectionism” is too inaccurate because it hides the scheme’s illogic. If “protectionism” worked as its champions claim, it enriches nearly everyone in the domestic economy not by increasing people’s access to goods and services, but by decreasing this access. Protectionism is the theory that people are made richer when the flow of goods and services available for their consumption is artificially slowed or when the cost of acquiring goods and services for their consumption is artificially raised. Protectionism is the bizarre notion that government-induced scarcity is really government-induced abundance.


So let’s make the language honest and more revealing. George Mason University economics doctoral student Jon Murphy proposes that we replace the misleading words “protectionism” and “protectionists” with the words “scarcityism” and “scarcityists” – words that better expose the true nature of government-erected obstacles to people’s access to goods and services.



Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

We'll finish today with ZERO HEDGE and the article on this coming economic crash and talk this week about???????????????, remember------



TRUMP DIDN'T BRING THIS MASSIVE ECONOMIC CRASH----CHINA DIDN'T ----RUSSIA AND PUTIN DIDN'T ----OUR GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS---CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ALL WORKED HARD THESE SEVERAL YEARS TO STAGE MASSIVE US TREASURY AND STATE MUNICIPAL BOND MARKET FRAUD JUST SO THERE WOULD BE NO SAFETY NETS----NO BAILOUTS-----NOTHING TO PROTECT AGAINST RECEIVERSHIP TO WORLD BANK AND IMF---THOSE PESKY GLOBAL 1%.




When folks get angry look to hold those 5% to the 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA POLS AND PLAYERS ACCOUNTABLE!


ZERO HEDGE is right wing global Wall Street even as he gives good information---his spin on policy is corporate and wealth----my spin on policy is labor and justice....public interest.
TOO MANY REGULATIONS say far-right global Wall Street ---today's citizens have been able to see first hand the ROBBER BARON period of 1990s-2010s. We KNOW it was systemic fraud and corruption bringing our economy down again and again and this was allowed to occur because CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA were allowed to IGNORE ALL FEDERAL REGULATION, PUBLIC JUSTICE, AND US CONSTITUTIONAL LAWS. It was NOT too many regulations bringing down our US economy----it was the failure to enforce and provide oversight and accountability. The same thing occurred a century ago during the ROARING 20s and that massive Wall Street fraud and government corruption bringing the US to the GREAT DEPRESSION. The same failure to enforce any US Rule of Law, regulations et al brought the Great Depression.


THE ZERO HEDGE FOLKS ARE SPINNING THESE STORIES TO RIGHT WING NO REGULATIONS.

As national media come clean on the mechanics of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA---remember, left social progressive Democrats have been shouting this since the 1990s and all media knew what this MASTER PLAN ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE attack on US economy led to. Please know these FARM TEAM CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS media are now painting as LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS.

Clinton's TECH BUBBLE was simply hundreds of billions of Federal funding to build global Wall Street online technology just to be able to pull these scams. Boom and bust----naked capitalism

Wall Street deregulation pushed by Clinton advisers, documents reveal

Previously restricted papers reveal attempts to rush president to support act, later blamed for deepening banking crisis


A Financial Services Modernization Act was passed by Congress in 1999. Photo: Steve Helber /AP

Dan Roberts in Washington


Saturday 19 April 2014 09.28 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 31 January 2017 11.27 EST


Wall Street deregulation, blamed for deepening the banking crisis, was aggressively pushed by advisers to Bill Clinton who have also been at the heart of current White House policy-making, according to newly disclosed documents from his presidential library.

The previously restricted papers reveal two separate attempts, in 1995 and 1997, to hurry Clinton into supporting a repeal of the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act and allow investment banks, insurers and retail banks to merge.


A Financial Services Modernization Act was passed by Congress in 1999, giving retrospective clearance to the 1998 merger of Citigroup and Travelers Group and unleashing a wave of Wall Street consolidation that was later blamed for forcing taxpayers to spend billions bailing out the enlarged banks after the sub-prime mortgage crisis.



The White House papers show only limited discussion of the risks of such deregulation, but include a private note which reveals that details of a deal with Citigroup to clear its merger in advance of the legislation were deleted from official documents, for fear of it leaking out.


“Please eat this paper after you have read this,” jokes the hand-written 1998 note addressed to Gene Sperling, then director of Clinton’s National Economic Council.


Earlier, in February 1995, newly-appointed Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, his deputy Bo Cutter and senior advisers including John Podesta gave the president three days to decide whether to back a repeal of Glass-Steagall.


In what Cutter described as “an action forcing event”, he wrote to Clinton on 21 February, telling him Rubin wanted to announce the policy before it was raised by the House banking committee on 1 March.


“In order to position Secretary Rubin – rather than any of the regulators – as the Administration’s chief spokesman on this issue, the Secretary intends to discuss the Administration’s position at a speech which will be covered by the press in New York on 27 February,” wrote Cutter on 21 February.


“It is therefore necessary to have an agreed-upon Administration position by the end of the day on Friday, 24 February.”

Podesta, who was then staff secretary but went on to become Clinton’s chief of staff, wrote a covering note telling the president that all his senior advisers backed the plan, although he noted the danger that “allowing banks to engage in riskier activities like securities or insurance could subject the deposit insurance fund to added risk”.

But Clinton’s advisers repeatedly reassured him that the decision to let Wall Street dismantle regulatory barriers designed to protect the public after the Great Depression simply represented inevitable modernisation.


“The argument for reform is that the separation between banking and other financial services mandated by Glass-Steagall is out of date in a world where banks, securities firms and insurance companies offer similar products and where firms outside the US do not face such restrictions,” wrote Podesta.


Podesta currently works at the White House as special adviser to President Barack Obama. Sperling stood down as director of Obama’s National Economic Council last month.


Along with Cutter, who worked on Obama’s transition committee, all three men were close allies of Rubin, who spearheaded the deregulation of Wall Street before joining the board of Citigroup in 1999. In 2007, he briefly became its chairman.


The closeness of Obama’s team to the deregulation policies of the late 1990s is well known and has been criticised by campaigners as a reason for the current administration’s reluctance to institute more aggressive Wall Street reforms after the banking crash.


But the new documents cast fresh light on the way the White House was first ushered toward deregulation by the tight group of Rubin allies.
A similar apparent attempt to rush president Clinton’s decision-making occurred later in the process, in 1997.
In a letter received by the president on 19 May, Clinton is again given just three days to decide whether to proceed with the deregulation agenda.


“The attached memorandum asks you to authorize Treasury to proceed to announce and submit their financial services modernization proposal,” writes Sperling.


“Secretary Rubin intends to introduce the proposal in a 21 May speech, and to testify before the House Banking Committee the first week of June.”

In his letter, Rubin reassures Clinton that the issue need not take up much of his attention.


“Should you approve our recommendation to move forward, the proposal would be a Treasury initiative, and would not require a significant time commitment from the White House,” writes the Treasury secretary.
“I and my staff will manage the process of advancing the proposal,” he adds.

The sense that the president need not concern himself with the detail is amplified by his own staff, who appear happy for him to be pushed along by the Treasury timetable.


In a covering note from staff secretary Todd Stern, Clinton is warned: “The attached memo is long, detailed and technical, but you can get the essentials by looking at the first four pages.”


Stern adds: “If you agree. Treasury will, tomorrow, put out some advance word on the Rubin speech.”

Throughout the documents, which are among 7,000 pages released by the Clinton library on Friday, there is little discussion of internal opposition to repealing Glass-Steagall, although some memos inadvertently touch on the risks that ultimately proved so expensive to the US taxpayer.


“Notwithstanding the pounding Treasury took today, there’s still much to their position on the regulatory structure (which really depends on the proposition that we’re not good at regulating complex financial (let alone non-financial) companies, but we’re pretty good at walling off the bank to protect the taxpayers),” concludes Clinton adviser Ellen Seidman in one 1997 memo.

___________________________________
While Republicans in Congress PRETEND to be anti-Trump they are MOVING FORWARD with complete bank deregulation as well----we need more of these last few decades in order to have FREE MARKETS AND CAPITAL MARKETS----oh, really?  I thought 99% ofr people knew none of this was FREE MARKET or capitalism ----it is all simply criminal.

MOVING FORWARD ONE GOVERNANCE seeks to take the global 99% out of the economy altogether so these global banking policies designed for Foreign Economic Zones will end badly for all global market 1% and their 2%.  Who is signing TPP?  All the small Asian, African, and Latin American nations with that bought and paid for global Wall Street 1% while the OLD WORLD MERCHANT OF VENICE TRADERS know these banking policies are bad.

This is why US left social progressives have been shouting that Trans Pacific Trade Pact is NOT ABOUT GLOBAL FREE TRADE----it is about restructuring US and Latin American governance structures.....

We see articles saying TPP is not a trade agreement from right wing and left wing---this is why TRUMP is pretending to stop TPP while he is really MOVING TPP FORWARD.


TPP Is Not A Trade Agreement

- PaulCraigRoberts.orgwww.paulcraigroberts.org/.../15/tpp-is-not-a-trade-agreement TPP Is Not A Trade Agreement The sole purpose of TTP is to give global corporations immunity to the laws of ... we were promised a debate about TPP, but did not get ...

Did you know it was Goldman Sachs having committed SOVEREIGN DEBT FRAUD during Bush era aimed at bringing GREECE and SPAIN down with sovereign debt? They brought those same fraudulent bond policies to US these several years and did the same to US. IT'S ALL FRAUD and our US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES where these frauds are occurring have global Wall Street pols and players just letting the frauds stand. Yes, our local government does have the power to stop all this---

Trump thinks Wall Street regulations are killing America and only Goldman Sachs can save us

• Pedro Nicolaci da Costa


• Feb. 15, 2017, 10:15 AM

President Donald Trump at a meeting with Intel CEO Brian Krzanich in the Oval Office last Wednesday.

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Self-regulation is so 1990s.


But President Donald Trump wants to bring it back, betting that Americans have short enough memories that they will forget that the new rules were put in place to protect them, however imperfectly, from a repeat of the devastating 2008 financial crisis.


Given public views of Wall Street and the makeup of Congress, however, he may have some difficulty in removing those rules.


The latest reason he offered for the need to roll back postcrisis reform was, as Slate's Jordan Weissmann put it, "hilariously flimsy."


"We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank because, frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine, who have nice businesses who can't borrow money," Trump said at a meeting with CEOs last week. "They just can't get any money because the banks just won't let them borrow, because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank."



The legislation took several steps to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis, including forcing big banks to raise more equity capital, developing a mechanism to wind down institutions considered too-big-to-fail and creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.


There is little evidence of a credit crunch in the US economy. But whatever Trump's motivations, we know, thanks to this handy breakdown from my colleague Frank Chaparro, what areas he and the Republican-controlled Congress intend to target. These include taking a more hands-off approach to banks considered "too big to fail" and a rollback of the Volcker Rule intended to prevent investment banks from gambling with customers' money.


But even though bank shareholders have salivated at the prospect of a return to the heyday of Wild West Wall Street, bidding stock prices higher, there are still more questions than answers.


Sean Tuffy, the head of regulatory intelligence at Brown Brothers Harriman, has gone through a useful mental exercise that helps shed some light on what might happen — and what might not. In particular, Tuffy is skeptical that deregulation will simply sail through Congress, given popular discontent with big banks and the fact that Trump himself ran for office on an anti-Wall Street platform.


Now that Trump is being advised by several former Goldman Sachs bankers, some have assumed the president will simply ax the existing legislation. But as Tuffy notes, it's not that easy.


"Clearly there will be an attempt to reform elements of Dodd-Frank," he says. "However, the Republicans don't have a supermajority. Any substantive change will require cooperation from the Democrats. We can expect any attempt to repeal key elements of Dodd-Frank to be met with stiff resistance."


In addition, Tuffy said: "The Trump administration needs to walk a tightrope on financial regulatory reform because anything seen as a giveaway to Wall Street could spark voter discontent. Given these two constraints, a bonfire of financial regulation still seems unlikely."

_______________________________________

ZERO HEDGE would like us to believe that those pesky FDR tax policies hit all Americans hard when in fact most of those tax laws were aimed at the rich and corporations.  That 70-90% tax bracket was installed as a way to bring back the wealth lost to massive frauds ---REDISTRIBUTION ----was simply justice.  The Robber Baron 1% of course exempted themselves from this justice but the NEW DEAL tax policy was exactly what an Obama and Clinton neo-liberals were elected in 2008 to install in 2009.......that is why Democrats won all chambers of Congress and the Presidency....a super-majority would have allowed all this to occur. 

ONLY TODAY UNLIKE LAST CENTURY OUR PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS CAPTURED WITH GLOBAL WALL STREET CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS WHO ARE THE FACE OF THESE FRAUDS AND EXTREME WEALTH.

'Taxes which apply to estates or to inheritance in the United States trace back to the 18th century'.

According to the IRS, a temporary stamp tax in 1797 applied a tax of varying size depending on the size of the bequest, ranging from 25 cents for a bequest between $50–$100, to 1 dollar for each $500. The tax was repealed in 1802. In the 19th century, the Revenue Act of 1862 and the War Revenue Act of 1898 also imposed rates, but were each repealed shortly thereafter. The modern estate tax was enacted in 1916.
The modern estate tax was temporarily phased out and repealed by tax legislation in 2001. This legislation gradually dropped the rates until they were eliminated in 2010. However, the law did not make these changes permanent and the estate tax returned in 2011

We need for our right wing voters and conservative Democrats to understand the importance in these progressive tax laws in creating REAL FREE MARKET COMPETITION.  We cannot have extreme wealth and corporate power and have a free market economy.  The tax rate for most Americans has not been that high historically----but global Wall Street taking the US back to being a colony will bring that same EAST INDIA COLONIAL TEA PARTY TAX BURDEN



TAXES

1930s
The income tax was new to the U.S. in 1913, and by 1929, although it took a maximum 23.1% bite, that was only at the $1 million level. The average family’s income then was $2,335, and that put average families in the 1/10th of 1 percent bracket. And there was still no Social Security tax, no state income tax, no sales tax, and no estate tax. Furthermore, most people in the country didn't even pay the income tax because they earned less than the legal minimum or they didn't bother filing. The government, therefore, had immense untapped sources of revenue to draw upon to fund its schemes to "cure" the depression. Roosevelt was able to raise the average income tax from 1.35% to 16.56% during his tenure—an increase of 1,100%.



Today
Everyone now pays an income tax in addition to all the other taxes. In most Western countries, the total of direct and indirect taxes is over 50%. For that reason, it seems unlikely that direct taxes will go much higher. But inflation is constantly driving everyone into higher brackets and will have the same effect. A person has had to increase his or her income faster than inflation to compensate for taxes. Whatever taxes a man does pay will reduce his standard of living by just that much, and it's reasonable to expect tax evasion and the underground economy to boom in response. That will cushion the severity of the depression somewhat while it serves to help change the philosophical orientation of society.


ZERO HEDGE did a good job these several years outing the US FED in manipulations of inflation and interest rates and why that was bad-----know what?  INFLATION  CAN AND FOUND A STABILITY IN MODERN HISTORY  BETWEEN 3-5%----and we need to return to that value.  Wall Street manipulations hid the fact that FED policies with global Wall STreet were taking REAL inflation to higher and higher levels creating exactly what ZERO HEDGE states above====soaring inflation with this coming economic crash only he makes that sound good---when it will kill WE THE PEOPLE.

Below we see an article about BRAZIL----remember, Latin America is controlled by the same OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE global 1% as US and what they are doing in US mirrors what is being done in South and Central America. 

THE US CONGRESS, MARYLAND ASSEMBLY, BALTIMORE CITY HALL----COULD STOP THESE WALL STREET US TREASURY AND STATE BOND FRAUDS AND STOP ALL THIS PLANNED, DELIBERATE, WILLFUL, AND DONE WITH MALICE COMING HYPER-INFLATION.

US FED is set with YELLEN ET AL to push inflation under the guise of having to do so to SAVE THE US ECONOMY.  Inflation is NEVER GOOD----even if someone says---WELL, WAGES WILL GO HIGHER---forget about that because cost of living will be UNBEARABLE for 99% of US citizens as with this article the 99% of Brazilian citizens.  IT IS ALL MANIPULATION BY GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS.

'Could you imagine living in an economy with a 181 percent inflation rate'?



The Economic Collapse Of South America Is Well Underway


March 7, 2016 6:22pm ETF BASIC NEWS


The 7th largest economy on the entire planet is completely imploding.  I have written previously about the economic depression that is plaguing Brazil, but since my last article it has gotten much, much worse. 

During 2015, Brazil’s economy shrank by 3.8 percent, but for the most recent quarter the decline was 5.89 percent on a year over year basis.
Unemployment is rising rapidly, the inflation rate is up over 10 percent, and Brazilian currency has lost 24 percent of its value compared to the U.S. dollar over the past 12 months.


At this point, Brazil is already experiencing its longest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and things are getting worse for ordinary Brazilians every single day.  The following comes from CNN…
But with Brazil plunging into its worst recession in over two decades — hopes for a brighter future are fading. The Brazilian economy shrank 3.8% in 2015, according to government data published Thursday. That’s the biggest annual drop since 1990 and the country is in its longest recession since the 1930s.



“I have never seen anything like this,” said Alves, 24, as he stood on his balcony overlooking Rocinha, a massive lower middle class neighborhood or favela in Rio de Janeiro where he grew up. “My parents would tell me about hard times, but today it is really tough. Prices are going up every day.”


So how did this happen?


Well, there are a couple of factors that are really hurting South American economies.
Number one, during the “boom years” governments and businesses in South America absolutely gorged on debt.  Unfortunately, many of those loans were denominated in U.S. dollars, and now that the U.S. dollar has appreciated greatly against local South American currencies it is taking far more of those local currencies to service and pay back those debts.


Number two, collapsing prices for oil and other commodities have been absolutely brutal for South American economies.  They rely very heavily on exporting commodities to the rest of the world, and so at the same time their debt problems are exploding they are getting a lot less money for the oil and industrial commodities that they are trying to sell to North America, Asia and Europe.


I want you to pay close attention to the following chart and analysis from Zero Hedge.  As you can see, the economic problems in Brazil appear to be greatly accelerating…
“The Brazilian economic downturn took a real turn for the worse in February,” according to Markit’s Composite PMI, which collapsed to record lows at 39.0. Despite a slightly less bad than expected GDP print this morning (still down a record 5.89% YoY), hope was quickly extinguished as PMIs showed economic activity continuing to contract at a record pace, job losses accelerating, and manufacturing’s collapse accelerating. As Market sums up, “With the global economy also showing signs of slowing, which will impact on external demand, it looks as if the downturn is set to continue to run its course in the coming months.”
GDP was a disaster (but better than expected)


And of course Brazil is not the only South American economy that is a basket case right now.  In fact, things in Venezuela are far worse.  In 2015, the Venezuelan economy shrunk by 10 percent, and the official rate of inflation was a staggering 181 percent.


Could you imagine living in an economy with a 181 percent inflation rate?


As prices have escalated out of control, citizens have attempted to hoard basic supplies in advance, and this has resulted in food shortages that are absolutely frightening…
Cardboard signs on the door warning of “No bread” have become increasingly common at Venezuelan bakeries.
Venezuela gets 96 percent of its foreign currency from oil exports, and as crude prices have plunged, so have the country’s imports — among them wheat.
The leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro has tightly controlled access to hard currency, and this has affected imports ranging from medicine to toilet paper. Now it is seriously affecting imports of wheat, which Venezuela does not grow.


Add to this the soaring inflation rate — 181 percent in 2015, the world’s highest — and you see why customers are mainly interested in buying basic food items such as bread.
Here in the United States, there are still people who doubt that an economic crisis is happening.


But in Venezuela and Brazil there is no debate.
Unfortunately, what is happening in Venezuela and Brazil is also slowly starting to happen to most of the rest of the planet as well.  It is just that they are a little farther down the road.  Economic and financial bubbles are bursting all over the world, and I like how author Vikram Mansharamani described this phenomenon during a recent interview with CNBC…


Deflationary tides are lapping the shores of countries across the world and financial bubbles are set to burst everywhere, Vikram Mansharamani, a lecturer at Yale University, told CNBC on Thursday.
“I think it all started with the China investment bubble that has burst and that brought with it commodities and that pushed deflation around the world and those ripples are landing on the shore of countries literally everywhere,” the high-profile author and academic said at the Global Financial Markets Forum in Abu Dhabi.


OH, REALLY??????



And of course the evidence of what Mansharamani was talking about is all around us.
Just this week we found out that Chinese state industries plan to lay off five to six million workers, U.S. factory orders have now fallen for 15 months in a row, and the corporate default rate in the United States has now risen above where it was at when Lehman Brothers collapsed.
There are some people that would like to point to the fact that stocks have bounced back a bit over the past couple of weeks as evidence that the crisis is over.
If they want to believe that, they should go ahead and believe that.


Unfortunately, the truth is that the hard economic numbers that are coming in from all over the world tell us very clearly that global economic activity is slowing down significantly.
A new global recession has already begun, and the pain that is already being felt all over the planet is just the beginning of what is coming.
____________________________________
The collapse of an Asia or Latin American nation's economy is not bringing our US economy down ---these global crises are caused by collapsing Western nations' economies---AKA EUROPE, UK, US----from this massive US Treasury junk bonding. The same global banking players who subprimed US mortgage loans during Bush era did the same with US Treasuries and that same global 1% and their 2% made a fortune killing their 99%.


 You will notice there was the same global recession/depression last century after that massive Wall Street ROBBER BARON global 1% FRAUD.



 WE THE PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE WITH THESE MANIPULATED INFLATIONS---WE CAN SIMPLY GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS.


Without going into complicated economic models from LAW'S, KEYNESIAN, SUPPLY SIDE most citizens understand that a business in a local community has to have these things----it has to have a product people want to buy and it has to have people with money to buy this product.  We know the failure of this dynamic is why our US cities have decaying and dying communities.  Kill employment ---kill consumption---kill local businesses. 

The only thing WE THE PEOPLE NEED IN RESPONSE TO ALL THESE GLOBAL WALL STREET ECONOMIC MANIPULATIONS IS GETTING BACK TO BASIC ECONOMICS----GROW LOCAL, COMMUNITY ECONOMIES.

Global Wall Street pols will do the opposite---it will continue to pretend US NEEDS GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND GLOBAL FACTORIES as our economies sit and are allowed to die this decade or so until they build US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES.


PRICES


1930s
Prices dropped radically because billions of dollars of inflationary currency were wiped out through the stock market crash, bond defaults, and bank failures. The government, however, somehow equated the high prices of the inflationary '20s with prosperity and attempted to prevent a fall in prices by such things as slaughtering livestock, dumping milk in the gutter, and enacting price supports. Since the collapse wiped out money faster than it could be created, the government felt the destruction of real wealth was a more effective way to raise prices. In other words, if you can't increase the supply of money, decrease the supply of goods.


Nonetheless, the 1930s depression was a deflationary collapse, a time when currency became worth more and prices dropped. This is probably the most confusing thing to most Americans since they assume—as a result of that experience—that "depression" means "deflation." It's also perhaps the biggest single difference between this depression and the last one.



Today


Prices could drop, as they did the last time, but the amount of power the government now has over the economy is far greater than what was the case 80 years ago. Instead of letting the economy cleanse itself by allowing the financial markets to collapse, governments will probably bail out insolvent banks, create mortgages wholesale to prop up real estate, and central banks will buy bonds to keep their prices from plummeting. All of these actions mean that the total money supply will grow enormously. Trillions will be created to avoid deflation. If you find men selling apples on street corners, it won't be for 5 cents apiece, but $5 apiece. But there won't be a lot of apple sellers because of welfare, nor will there be a lot of apples because of price controls.

Consumer prices will probably skyrocket as a result, and the country will have an inflationary depression. Unlike the 1930s, when people who held dollars were king, by the end of the Greater Depression, people with dollars will be wiped out.


WE THE PEOPLE must stop allowing global Wall STreet CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA create these ECONOMIC POLICIES having nothing to do with what 99% of citizens want. We must return to what worked in US for centuries BEFORE ROARING 20s. Note this article shows who controlled Congress and the economic policies of the roaring 20s-----the Republicans wealth and corporate power. Today our Democratic Party is the same---far-right wing Reagan/Clinton neo-liberalism. 

This paper takes a right wing stance favoring SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS.



Keynesian Theory vs. Supply-Side Economics: The Ideology of the Political Parties throughout History


Political Parties Final Paper Presentation

byJohn Tolland on 12 April 2011


Transcript of Keynesian Theory vs. Supply-Side Economics: The Ideology of the Political Parties throughout History


Introduction


There have been many recesssions/depressions throughout history

Congress has played a crucial role in applying two different theories to promote economic recovery: (Keynesian Theory) and (Supply-Side Economics)


Democrats in Congress have used Keynesian Theory while Republicans have used Supply-Side Economics


Will examine different recessions and how different Congresses and parties have applied the different theories Keynesian Theory



Keynesian Theory has been used many times throughout history
Great Depression is a great example of the Keynesian Theory at work
Another example is present day in the form of stimulus packages to promote economic recovery


So what is Keynesian Theory?

Keynesian Theory deals with spending and the effect spending has on the economy.
Theory has been used through liberal democrats in Congress throughout history
This theory calls for government spending when the economy was bad


Believers in Keynesian Theory assume that the government shouldn't worry about deficits in an economc downturn because the government can recoup the money lost in the form of debt in fiscally good times.
Keynesians today are split on one decisive issue: some believe unemployment is more important than inflation in a bad economy, while others think the opposite.


Regardless of the small factions among believers of this theory, they all believe the government should play a large role in economic recovery.


Supply Side Economics

Used by most Conservative Republicans

Main component: In order to increase income levels and stimulate economy, output must be expanded
They believe that higher tax rates do not promote income or output but actually hinders them.
Policy is very important to supply-siders
If you control inflation, the more money will be in circulation in the economy
Supply side economic policy of cutting high marginal tax rates is a long run strategy to enhance growth rather than a short-run tool to end a recession, but it can be used to end a recession as well


Keynesian Criticism: Believe government should not cut taxes during a recession when inflation is high


Roaring 20's
This period was marked by the Republican Majorities in both the House and the Senate (68th, 69th, 70th Congresses)


They applied Supply Side Economics
Cut government spending and taxes and in turn provided mor money on the Supply Side
Result: the economy was thriving and inflation was kept in check


This theory was put into effect after a short depression following WWI


During the 1920's: increased earnings by 22% of employed wage earners


Despite Republican majorities in Congress and President Coolidge being a Republican President: Congress did not always see eye to eye (Indepedent in nature following WWI).

Congress did agree on fiscal policy and supply-side economics


New Deal Congress


Congress had democratic majorities in Both the House of Represenatatives and the Senate (73rd and 74th Congress)


Used Keynesian Theory to stimulate economy during Great Depression


First Hundred Days: 73rd Congress enacted the "New Deal"
Nationalized the banking industry and put more power in the hand of the government


Passed in Congress almost immediately (only took 8 hours)
Govenrment now played a role in everything from Emergency Farm Mortgage Act to reforestation in the Civilian Conservation Corps


National Debt would become an issue in the future with all of these new government programs
74th Congress contributed to what became known as the Second New Deal


Experts say that without Congress' campaigning, much of the second new deal woud not have standed a chance
The Second New Deal enacted the Wagner Act and the Social Security Act


The 73rd and 74th Congresses changed the makeup of the United States government and its role forever: I believe this to be the beginning of the welfare state we have today


80's


97th, 98th, 99th Congresses had Republican majorities in the House and Democrat Majorities in the Senate
100th Congress had Democrat Majorities in the House and Senate
split government still agreed on fiscal policy: this may be due to the support given to Reagan and his policies due to his popularity from his foreign policy


97th, 98th, and 99th congresses used supply-side econimcs


It wasn't until the Iran-Contra affair did democrats in Congress start bashing the fiscal policy passed during this period: probably due to Reagan's unpopularity


Cato Institute: on 8 of 10 key economic variables, the American Economy performed better during the Reagan years than during the pre and post Reagan years.

97th congress came together to pass the largest tax reduction in American History: highest tax brackets had the largest tax breaks
Stayed true to supply-side economics with the theory that people in the highest bracket would invest more money in the economy, which in turn would stimulate growth

National debt was increased during this period which is not consistent with Supply-Side Economics, but this was due to the Cold War and increases defense spending passed by Congress


Divided congress also passsed bills to cut spending in government beuracracies

Why did democrats in house go along with this theory?


After 1980 elections, Congress felt that people voted for change and wanted to reign in the spending
Democrats did fight Republicans in Congress on the cutting of different government agencies


111th Congress


Economy was in a deep recession

Both House and Senate had large democrat majorities
Used Keynesian Theory to help stimulate economy
First passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009


This bill spent government money to bail out banks and other businesses in the United States
Tactic was similar to the one the New Deal Congress used after the Great Depression
Cost on national debt was very large
Unemployment rate actually increased during this time period
They also passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: especially ambitious since many people were more concerned with the economy at the time and creating jobs
Bill reformed the Healthcare Industry


Although the Healthcare Industry needed attention, many believe this was not an appropriate time to tackle such anissue with the fiscal problems that were already present
Stayed true to the Keynesian Theory: the 111th Congress increased government spending while disregarding the increae in national debt, assuming the debt will be taken care of in a period of economic stability



Conclusion
Two parties have adopted different theories to stimulate the economy


Keynesian Theory used by demcrats in Congress
Supply-Side Economics used by republicans in Congress
Each party seems to have been successful when they put their theories in practice with the exception of the 11th Congress, as we do not yet know if their policies will pull us out of a recession or not bc/ not enough time has passed

What precedent does this set for the future?


Keynesian theory can be successful at promoting economic growth as well as Supply-Side Economics

I believe Supply-Side Economics works at recovering economy at a greater pace than that of the Keynesian Theory: It took years for the New Deal Congress' legislation to work and help to promote economic growth. Economic growth stimulated by the Congress in the 20's seemed to come about faster from Supply-Side Economics


Keynesian Theory implented by the New Deal Congress changed the makeup and the role of the government forever
The 111th Congress without a doubt changed the makeup of the Health Care System and history may show they have changed even more than that
Keynesian Theory has increased the size of the Federal Government and increased the Welfare State of the United States


I beleive that Supply-Side Economics provides a responsible answer for recovery from a recession/depression and also growth for the future without changing the makeup of the government and its role in citizen's daily lives


Supply-Side Economics if used today would foster growth in the economy at a greater rate, cut back on government spending, and reign in the size of the government

Question


There have been many different depressions/recessions throughout the history of the United States. Political Scientists claim there are two main theories that have been used in practice for economic revitalization, these being the Keynesian Theory and the Supply Scale Economics Theory. Although called many different names, these two recovery tactics have been used and produced contrasting results. Explain each theory used by the different Parties in power while providing examples of the use and result in American history. After examining the varying results, determine which theory is more practical and should be used today. Keep in mind how each party has contributed to the use of each theory


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Citizens' Oversight Maryland is a left social progressive organization meaning we are social capitalists-----we believe government legislation must take the benefit of the public---the citizens----before the benefit of corporate profits.  We understand businesses need to profit to hire and prosper ====we also understand that US corporations were earning millions of dollars in profits before they were sent overseas to earn billions.  This is when public interest legislation went corporate profit and the economy went systemically corrupt and fraudulent----LAISSEZ-FAIRE NEO-LIBERALISM.

The problem for those wanting left social capitalism is this-----KEYNESIAN economics works if we have honest politicians.  What we saw these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was a Congress that reverted a well-functioning Keynesian economy to LAISSEZ-FAIRE while using Federal agencies and spending to fuel massive corporate and Wall Street fraud.  It was likely staged that way by global empire-building pols.  Whenever there is massive frauds and movement to extreme wealth there is then that movement saying we need to be MARXIST----extreme wealth meets extreme poverty.  It is all one global 1% economic plan.

When the US was young and our towns and cities small we were able to have a successful blend of KEYNESIAN economics.  Our US government funded land grants giving US citizens opportunities to own land----it gave funding for small business startups from 18th century forward so government intervention is NOT BAD WHEN CITIZENS HOLD THEIR POLITICIANS ACCOUNTABLE.

WE THE PEOPLE MUST ENGAGE IN POLITICS----WE MUST HOLD POLITICIANS AND PLAYERS ACCOUNTABLE---GET RID OF THESE GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS.  BRING BACK OUR LOCAL ECONOMIES.



Five Positive Results of Keynesian Economics


by Angie Mohr


British economist, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) wrote his seminal "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" in 1935. This book has been the cornerstone of economic practice for many countries, including the United States, for decades. Keynes believed that government should manage consumer demand through policy and taxation, thereby avoiding inflation and unemployment, the results of too much and too little demand, respectively. Keynesian economics has several positive outcomes.

Higher Employment Levels

In recessionary periods, employment drops off and unemployment rates soar as businesses cut back on the size of their workforce. Lack of employment then decreases consumer demand for products and services as families tighten their belt. Thus, a dangerous downward spiral is created. When the government steps in to financially stimulate businesses, those companies begin to hire once again. When the government invests in public works projects, they directly increase employment. With both methods, the downward spiral is halted.


Stabilization of the Banking Industry

As witnessed during the 2008 to 2009 recession, instability in the American economy led to banks and other lending institutions tightening up on lending. Without access to funding, small business start-up and growth halted, and the real estate industry suffered as mortgages were difficult to obtain. When the government steps in to guarantee loans, lenders are more confident in providing the capital needed in both the business and consumer markets.


Tighter Control on Government Spending

While Keynesian theory allows for increased government spending during recessionary times, it also calls for government restraint in a rapidly growing economy. This prevents the increase in demand that spurs inflation. It also forces the government to cut deficits and save for the next down cycle in the economy.


New Tools to Monitor a Country's Economic Output

One of Keynes' goals was to be able to monitor the total economic output of a country, an action that, at that time, had not yet been done in America or England. Keynes developed the precursor to the Gross National Product, in which the health of the economy can be measured by its production versus its capacity. By understanding and measuring these indicators, a government is better able to predict recessionary and inflationary cycles, and is thus better equipped to step in early to intervene in negative situations.
Moderation of Interest RatesIn an overly-stimulated economic cycle, the demand for loans to increase consumption and investment outstrips lenders' abilities to provide them. This causes increases in interest rates, fueling inflation. Under Keynesian theory, government spending in such a market is curtailed, lowering the overall demand for loans and cooling off interest rates and, ultimately, inflation.

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This coming economic crash and collapse of the dollar is designed to kill our national sovereignty and create that colonial model of a North and South America as simply independent Foreign Economic Zones operating under a global corporate rule.  This brings back the GLOBAL 1% MERCHANTS OF VENICE---those super-rich creating FIEFDOMS.

Those waxing sentimental for the MEDIEVAL DARK AGES thinking it will be the same old world European 1%  trading with those Asian global 1% trading with those Near/Far East global 1%-----that is not to where ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE is going.  The hyper-securitization and surveillance tied to SMART CITIES SMART HOUSES will bring authoritarianism to new heights and the goal of population control for a global 1% will be devastating to all population groups. 

THESE ARE REALLY SOCIOPATHETIC CITIZENS----

Where WE THE PEOPLE want to maintain our mid-size US cities and simply rebuild a thriving economy-----the global 1% are selling this idea of COSMOPOLITAN as if it will look like WESTERN societal structures we have known for thousands of years-----that is what will be dismantled.  The UTOPIAN SMART CITY will be only sustainable for a global 1% and their 2%----to live outside these castle walls will be impossible.

THE SOCIETY


1930s

The world was largely rural or small-town. Communications were slow, but people tended to trust the media. The government exercised considerable moral suasion, and people tended to support it. The business of the country was business, as Calvin Coolidge said, and men who created wealth were esteemed. All told, if you were going to have a depression, it was a rather stable environment for it; despite that, however, there were still plenty of riots, marches, and general disorder.


Today

The country is now urban and suburban, and although communications are rapid, there's little interpersonal contact. The media are suspect. The government is seen more as an adversary or an imperial ruler than an arbitrator accepted by a consensus of concerned citizens. Businessmen are viewed as unscrupulous predators who take advantage of anyone weak enough to be exploited.
A major financial smashup in today's atmosphere could do a lot more than wipe out a few naives in the stock market and unemploy some workers, as occurred in the '30s; some sectors of society are now time bombs. It's hard to say, for instance, what third- and fourth-generation welfare recipients are going to do when the going gets really tough.


As we see ridiculous national media about Trump vs Deep State as if Trump were not simply CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA MOVING FORWARD-----most Americans whether right or left wing understand what DEEP STATE means---it is all that surveillance----mega-data----control of all our media and telecommunications.  

This is the top issue for WE THE PEOPLE as global Wall Street brings our US economic down and MOVES FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.  The US and our cities have PLENTY OF REVENUE ------we must do as in FDR and NEW DEAL and bring it back to our public sector and to our local economies.  Global Wall Street pols and their 5% to the 1%  will be working hard to see that does not happen.

This is the societal change we are fighting-----rolling protests for weeks and months in our US cities to GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS!


October 26, 2016
A Deep State of Mind: America’s Shadow Government and Its Silent Coup
by John W. Whitehead




Photo by Diego Torres Silvestre | CC BY 2.0




Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system … a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state…. The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization… It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government…. This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable.”
— Senator William Jenner, 1954 speech


Unaffected by elections. Unaltered by populist movements. Beyond the reach of the law.
Say hello to America’s shadow government.


A corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country, this shadow government represents the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.


No matter which candidate wins the presidential election, this shadow government is here to stay. Indeed, as recent documents by the FBI reveal, this shadow government--also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group”—may well have played a part in who will win the White House this year.


To be precise, however, the future president will actually inherit not one but two shadow governments.
The first shadow government, referred to as COG or Continuity of Government, is made up of unelected individuals who have been appointed to run the government in the event of a “catastrophe.” COG is a phantom menace waiting for the right circumstances—a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, an economic meltdown—to bring it out of the shadows, where it operates even now. When and if COG takes over, the police state will transition to martial law.


Yet it is the second shadow government—also referred to as the Deep State—that poses the greater threat to freedom right now. Comprised of unelected government bureaucrats, corporations, contractors, paper-pushers, and button-pushers who are actually calling the shots behind the scenes, this government within a government is the real reason “we the people” have no real control over our government.



The Deep State, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.


So who or what is the Deep State?


It’s the militarized police, which have joined forces with state and federal law enforcement agencies in order to establish themselves as a standing army. It’s the fusion centers and spy agencies that have created a surveillance state and turned all of us into suspects. It’s the courthouses and prisons that have allowed corporate profits to take precedence over due process and justice. It’s the military empire with its private contractors and defense industry that is bankrupting the nation. It’s the private sector with its 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances, “a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government.” It’s what former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren refers to as “a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies”: the Department of Defense, the State Department, Homeland Security, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a handful of vital federal trial courts, and members of the defense and intelligence committees.


It’s every facet of a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.


These are the key players that drive the shadow government.
This is the hidden face of the American police state that will continue long past Election Day.


Just consider some of the key programs and policies advanced by the shadow government that will continue no matter who occupies the Oval Office.


Domestic surveillance.


No matter who wins the presidential popularity contest, the National Security Agency (NSA), with its $10.8 billion black ops annual budget, will continue to spy on every person in the United States who uses a computer or phone. Thus, on any given day, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. Local police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.


Global spying.


The NSA’s massive surveillance network, what the Washington Post refers to as a $500 billion “espionage empire,” will continue to span the globe and target every single person on the planet who uses a phone or a computer. The NSA’s Echelon program intercepts and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax and email message sent anywhere in the world. In addition to carrying out domestic surveillance on peaceful political groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and several religious groups, Echelon has also been a keystone in the government’s attempts at political and corporate espionage.


Roving TSA searches.


The American taxpayer will continue to get ripped off by government agencies in the dubious name of national security. One of the greatest culprits when it comes to swindling taxpayers has been the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), with its questionable deployment of and complete mismanagement of millions of dollars’ worth of airport full-body X-ray scanners, punitive patdowns by TSA agents and thefts of travelers’ valuables. Considered essential to national security, TSA programs will continue in airports and at transportation hubs around the country.


USA Patriot Act, NDAA. 


America’s so-called war on terror, which it has relentlessly pursued since 9/11, will continue to chip away at our freedoms, unravel our Constitution and transform our nation into a battlefield, thanks in large part to such subversive legislation as the USA Patriot Act and National Defense Authorization Act. These laws completely circumvent the rule of law and the rights of American citizens. In so doing, they re-orient our legal landscape in such a way as to ensure that martial law, rather than the U.S. Constitution, is the map by which we navigate life in the United States. These laws will continue to be enforced no matter who gets elected.


Militarized police state. 


Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers into heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. Having been given the green light to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts, America’s law enforcement officials, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, will continue to keep the masses corralled, controlled, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.


SWAT team raids.


With more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by local police for relatively routine police matters and federal agencies laying claim to their own law enforcement divisions, the incidence of botched raids and related casualties will continue to rise. Nationwide, SWAT teams will continue to be employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession.


Domestic drones. The domestic use of drones will continue unabated. As mandated by Congress, there will be 30,000 drones crisscrossing the skies of America by 2020, all part of an industry that could be worth as much as $30 billion per year. These machines, which will be equipped with weapons, will be able to record all activities, using video feeds, heat sensors and radar. An Inspector General report revealed that the Dept. of Justice has already spent nearly $4 million on drones domestically, largely for use by the FBI, with grants for another $1.26 million so police departments and nonprofits can acquire their own drones.


School-to-prison pipeline. 


The paradigm of abject compliance to the state will continue to be taught by example in the schools, through school lockdowns where police and drug-sniffing dogs enter the classroom, and zero tolerance policies that punish all offenses equally and result in young people being expelled for childish behavior. School districts will continue to team up with law enforcement to create a “schoolhouse to jailhouse track” by imposing a “double dose” of punishment: suspension or expulsion from school, accompanied by an arrest by the police and a trip to juvenile court.


Overcriminalization. 


The government bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. Consequently, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided.


Privatized Prisons. 


States will continue to outsource prisons to private corporations, resulting in a cash cow whereby mega-corporations imprison Americans in private prisons in order to make a profit. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years.


Endless wars. 


America’s expanding military empire will continue to bleed the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour). The Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.



Are you getting the message yet?


The next president, much like the current president and his predecessors, will be little more than a figurehead, a puppet to entertain and distract the populace from what’s really going on.


As Lofgren reveals, this state within a state, “concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue,” is a “hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”


The Deep State not only holds the nation’s capital in thrall, but it also controls Wall Street (“which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater”) and Silicon Valley.


This is fascism in its most covert form, hiding behind public agencies and private companies to carry out its dirty deeds.
It is a marriage between government bureaucrats and corporate fat cats.


As Lofgren concludes:


[T]he Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change… If there is anything the Deep State requires it is silent, uninterrupted cash flow and the confidence that things will go on as they have in the past. It is even willing to tolerate a degree of gridlock: Partisan mud wrestling over cultural issues may be a useful distraction from its agenda.


In other words, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, as long as government officials—elected and unelected alike—are allowed to operate beyond the reach of the Constitution, the courts and the citizenry, the threat to our freedoms remains undiminished.


So the next time you find yourselves despondent over the 2016 presidential candidates, remember that it’s just a puppet show intended to distract you from the silent coup being carried out by America’s shadow government.

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'Booker’s language recalls the puffery of finance capital — the same group he vigorously defended in 2012 after the leader of his political party (Barack Obama) gently suggested the possibility of ending private equity tax loopholes'.


Below we see a discussion about what ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE will look like after this coming economic crash from massive US Treasury and municipal bond fraud and as WE THE PEOPLE are allowed to lose everything from last century's strong left social progressive economics-----here we see the next generation CLINTON/BUSH-----as cheerleaders---

OH, THIS IS ALL ABOUT JOBS AND CREATING BUSINESSES ----IT WILL BE GREAT SAYS 5% TO THE 1% GLOBAL WALL STREET PLAYERS.

They of course think they will be keeping those financial gains from ROBBER BARON YEARS!

Closing private equity loopholes says Corey Booker----not on MY LIFE!

As we fight in US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones police abuse and brutality ----over-militarization----these are the folks pushing as hard as possible for this coming economic crash to

MOVE FORWARD THIS FAR-RIGHT DEEP STATE AUTHORITARIANISM

'While there were occasional mentions of basic issues related to security and privacy, most of the concern stemmed from worries about “over regulation,” which meant anything more than a “light touch” approach. In his statement, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D–NJ) neatly encapsulated the political economic ideology on display in the hearing — and while he was more enthusiastic and explicit in tone than others, his remarks are representative and worth quoting at length':

THIS IS COREY BOOKER ON SMART CITIES AND LOSS OF PRIVACY AND HYPER-SECURITIZATION----HE SAYS---WE CANNOT DEREGULATE ENOUGH! CLINTON CLONE.


“This is a phenomenal opportunity for a bipartisan, profoundly patriotic approach to an issue that can explode our economy. I think that there are trillions of dollars, creating countless jobs, improving quality of life, [and] democratizing our society in ways that gives advantages to people who are being marginalized on the edges, breaking down barriers of race and class. We can’t even imagine the future that this portends of, and we should be embracing that ... And so a lot of my concerns are really what my Republican colleagues also echoed — which is, we should be doing everything possible to encourage this, and nothing to restrict it ... But for us to do anything to inhibit that leap in humanity to me seems unfortunate ... And I also believe that this should be a public-private partnership. We all have a role.”

This article is long but is great in showing to where MOVING FORWARD will go if left unchecked-----add BASIC INCOME to push 99% of citizens to third world wages ---that FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISM---for that touch of enslavement.

Please GOOGLE for entire article!

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The spectrum of control: A social theory of the smart city

by Jathan Sadowski and Frank Pasquale


Abstract
There is a certain allure to the idea that cities allow a person to both feel at home and like a stranger in the same place. That one can know the streets and shops, avenues and alleys, while also going days without being recognized. But as elites fill cities with “smart” technologies — turning them into platforms for the “Internet of Things” (IoT): sensors and computation embedded within physical objects that then connect, communicate, and/or transmit information with or between each other through the Internet — there is little escape from a seamless web of surveillance and power. This paper will outline a social theory of the “smart city” by developing our Deleuzian concept of the “spectrum of control.” We present two illustrative examples: biometric surveillance as a form of monitoring, and automated policing as a particularly brutal and exacting form of manipulation. We conclude by offering normative guidelines for governance of the pervasive surveillance and control mechanisms that constitute an emerging critical infrastructure of the “smart city.”

Contents

I. Introduction
II. What is a smart city?
III. The ideology of the smart city
IV. Smart cities in societies of control
V. The soft power of biometric surveillance
VI. The hard power of policing technologies
VII. Cyborg urbanization, blurred boundaries
VIII. Taking back control



I. Introduction

There is a certain allure to the idea that cities allow a person to both feel at home and like a stranger in the same place. That one can know the streets and shops, avenues and alleys, while also going days without being recognized. But as government and corporate actors, often in close partnership with each other, fill cities with “smart” [1] technologies — turning them into platforms for the “Internet of Things” (IoT): sensors and computation embedded within physical objects that then connect, communicate, and/or transmit information with or between each other through the Internet — there is little escape from a seamless web of surveillance (cf., Hollands, 2008; Townsend, 2014; Neirotti, et al., 2014). Soon, for example, shoppers and viewers will be as “known” by a store or gallery as they are able to know it (Arnsdorf, 2010). Facial recognition software, or smartphone emanations, can project your identity, likely spending habits, and reputation: shoplifter or big spender, “Mortgage Woes” or “Boomer Barons” (to use actual categories from marketers) (Castle Press, 2010).

“Big data” is the new currency of commerce, but like money, some have far better terms of access to it than others. In finance, the average borrower must turn over detailed, personal records to receive a loan; the bank is under no parallel obligation, though, to explain its own internal decision-making in nearly as much detail (Pasquale, 2015). The same dynamics are emerging in the IoT: powerful entities centripetally attracting more data from their users, but denying access to users and regulators, even when very troubling data uses and breaches occur. It no longer makes sense to think of “the Internet” as a thing that one accesses via a computer. Not when the city itself is reimagined and reconstructed as a platform for and node within networked information-communication technologies (ICT).

Wired’s flagship article on the IoT asks, “Have you ever lost an object in your house and dreamed that you could just type a search for it, as you would for a wayward document on your hard drive?” (Wasik, 2013). Well you can now, we are assured, thanks to a startup called StickNFind Technologies that sells cheap, small, “sticker” sensors. Lose a child at the mall? “Smart fashion” RFID tags will keep him or her plugged into the network and tracked at all times. And why stop with kids when making sensor-laden sartorial choices? Before long your car, house, appliances, and every other part of your environment will be engaging in a constant stream of networked communication with each other. Taken at the urban scale, the city becomes a cocoon of connectivity that engulfs us — or, alternatively, it becomes a web that ensnares us — as smart technologies are integrated into our everyday lives. These technologies are billed as modes of finding, of wayfaring. They are technologies of search (when we apply them) and technologies of reputation (when used to evaluate us) (Pasquale, 2015). They map, categorize, and classify — and what could be more innocuous than mere information?

Calculating the costs and benefits of the innovation is a Sisyphean, and deeply ideological, task. Who knows what sinister or spectacular applications may emerge? Scenario analysis and planning could be a valuable alternative to cost-benefit studies (Verchick, 2010): these methods acknowledge the incommensurability of the gains in convenience, and losses of privacy, portended by the IoT. But corporate and government discourse on IoT has tended to marginalize the most important negative scenario analyses, downplaying them as paranoid projections. Technocrats distort policy evaluations of pervasive surveillance and control in urban environments. Moreover, their normative tools of evaluation, focusing on consumer and citizen “consent” to surveillance, are manipulable enough to embrace even the most disturbing technologies of control — such as drone-driven crowd control directed at protesters, or automobile loan technology that disables cars mere minutes after a payment is late — as expressions of democratic will and market rationality.

Technocrats’ convenient blindness to the most worrisome aspects of the “smart city” invites a more balanced theoretical response. We propose one such response that lays out the characteristics and consequences of a dominant socio-political logic that courses throughout and ties together many of the various practices and ideologies related to “smart cities.” We begin by providing a contextual overview of the “smart city,” building from the burgeoning analytical work on the topic. This leads into a critical introduction to the ideology of the “smart city,” focusing on the stated aspirations of some of its most notable corporate, governmental, and academic exponents. We then offer a Deleuzian alternative, outlining a social theory of the “smart city” in service to capital as a form of control (rather than emancipation) of its subject-citizens. Next, we present two illustrative examples along the resulting spectrum of control: biometric surveillance as a form of monitoring, and automated policing as a particularly brutal and exacting form of manipulation. Our penultimate section makes explicit the stakes of the deep integration of person–machine — city in our “post-digital-dualist era” (Jurgenson, 2012). And we end by offering some normative guidelines for governance of the pervasive surveillance and control mechanisms that constitute the emerging critical infrastructure of the “smart city.”