For folks new to this blog Citizens' Oversight Maryland as social Democrats love religious freedom and fight to maintain Separation of Church and State because this is necessary to assure religious freedom.  What happens whenever extreme wealth and global corporate power is involved our religious sector becomes as corrupt as all others and 1% Wall Street and the rich see our religions as tools for power.  I want to look at sending public education funding to private religious schools as a long-term issue in the US but try to relay how those seeking those funds for private schools will in the end find the importance of keeping our public school systems strong.

There is a great article written soon after the 2008 economic crash as Obama and Congress were working with Wall Street and the FED to make sure the tens of trillions of dollars of fraud taken last decade remained with the rich ----THE NEW DEAL WE DIDN'T KNOW ---a book review in the New York Review of Books Sept 26th, 2013.  This date is significant because it was in 2010 that those listed above joined to create an economic strategy with goals of sending the US into a great recession/depression with the US Treasury and municipal bond fraud unfolding today.  What this author knew as did all academic economic public policy researchers was Bernanke was taking the US to the same economic space that existed during the roaring 20s bringing that GREAT DEPRESSION.  For this discussion----THE NATION'S RELIGIOUS LEADERS KNOW THIS TOO.  This is why I shout against that 5% of the 1% religious citizens working to bring this extreme wealth and power while tying our religious institutions to these criminal acts.

The point of this article was this:  the 1% bringing the last great Wall Street fraud and economic crash taking the nation to economic peril were a small force then but are those in political office today controlling how the nation is taken after this coming economic crash and great depression.  The article explains what these wealth and power people wanted America to become in answer to that great economic distress----and it was the opposite of FDR and the NEW DEAL.  Reading this article gives citizens an idea of where these CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA 1% FAR-RIGHT NEO-LIBERAL/NEO-CONS get their political ideology in this walk to ONE WORLD NEW WORLD ORDER. This is why we have social Democratic FEELING THE BERN posers across the US working hard to make sure the US goes with the global rich authoritarian militaristic PRAGMATIC NILISM and not the FDR/Bernie Sanders left-leaning social Democratic solution.

The 1% back in the days of FDR and the Great Depression wanted to take the US to a political structure of AUTHORITARIANISM thinking Stalin or Mussolini was a good model.  Of course that was before MAO became that model in China for global economic neo-liberalism.  As usual, these far-right 1% stated the people really liked those authoritarian models.  All of this has to do with religious schools in knowing the goals of today's leaders being towards Libertarian Marxism having no religion in mind----while playing on religious schools in breaking down our American democratic public education system.  It is simply yet another POSING ---this time POSING RELIGIOUS BENEFACTOR by people having no morals, ethics, Rule of Law or natural law tied to religious thought.

AGAIN, THE REASON THIS BOOK AND ARTICLE CAME OUT IN 2013 WAS THIS BEING THE TIME POLICY BECAME CLEAR NATIONAL LEADERS WERE MOVING TOWARDS THAT AUTHORITARIAN OPTION FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND NOT THE NEW DEAL.

The New Deal We Didn’t Know
Nicholas Lemann
September 26, 2013 Issue
Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
by Ira Katznelson
Liveright, 706 pp., $29.95

An African-American entering a movie theater through the segregated back entrance, Mississippi, October 1939; photograph by Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration



The New Deal, the apogee of liberal political power in American history and a story with a relatively happy ending—the Great Depression vanquished, World War II won—has usually had its history presented, except by conservatives who disapprove of the expansion of central government and taxation in the 1930s and 1940s, as an uplifting, inspiring one. That is not how Ira Katznelson presents it. There is only one very brief personal note in his long, scholarly book—a snip of memory about having to wear military-style dogtags and practice responses to a nuclear attack as a schoolchild in the early 1950s—but all of Fear Itself is suffused with the same sense of pure terror during the Roosevelt and Truman years as, say, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America. It’s easy to forget not just how dangerous the situation was, at home and abroad, during the New Deal, but how palpable were outcomes far worse than what we got.
Another difference between Fear Itself and most of the familiar histories of the New Deal is that Katznelson thinks like a political scientist. That means that, although he defines the period presidentially, as the twenty years when Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were in the White House, Roosevelt and Truman themselves are spectral presences. They are not the primary determiners of the course of government, and Katznelson has no interest in their personal qualities or their methods of leadership. Instead his focus is on Congress and government agencies, and more broadly on political systems, voting, and interest groups. This gives Fear Itself the feeling of a fresh look at a familiar story; what Katznelson loses in ignoring the inherent force of the hero narrative, he gains in being able to make an argument that largely ignores the presidency.
The argument bears laying out in some detail. Katznelson begins, usefully, by placing the New Deal in a global setting: the severity of the Great Depression presented an existential threat to liberal democracy everywhere, both as an ideal and as a reality. In response to the same economic crisis that confronted the United States, Germany turned to National Socialism, Italy to Fascism, and the Soviet Union already had a form of communism that no liberals except willfully blind ones could believe in. During Roosevelt’s first term, these alternate systems were on the verge of imposing themselves by force on many other countries.
It was not at all clear that democracy would survive here. George Kennan privately came to believe that the United States should become an “authoritarian state.” Walter Lippmann, on a visit to Roosevelt a month before his inauguration as president, advised him that “you may have no alternative but to assume dictatorial powers.” Even in public, all sorts of prominent people praised the undemocratic alternative political systems that were emerging in Europe, especially Italian Fascism. One prominent New Deal official hung a portrait of Benito Mussolini in his office. Nicholas Murray Butler told the Columbia freshman class that the dictatorships were now producing a better class of leaders than the democracies.


When Italo Balbo, Italy’s minister of aviation, barnstormed across the United States in 1933, he was greeted as a hero. At a grand welcoming dinner at a Chicago hotel, Katznelson tells us, “many rose to offer a Fascist salute when Balbo and his squadron entered the ballroom.” Even after the war, it wasn’t considered disqualifying that Iola Nikitchenko, the Soviet judge at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, had presided over Stalin’s worst legal depredations, like the 1937 Moscow show trials, just a few years earlier.
Katznelson wants us to understand how far from assured the final result of the New Deal was. And—since there was no real space separating the Depression from World War II, or the war from the threat of nuclear destruction--he maintains that the national fear that attended Roosevelt’s coming to the presidency did not abate much over the next twenty years. The New Deal took place, he writes, in “an atmosphere of unremitting uncertainty about liberal democracy’s capacity and fate.” This is a very dark picture of the period that also manages to convey how profoundly grateful we should be that things didn’t turn out worse, as they easily could have.
For Katznelson, the central institution in a democracy is the national legislature, so the test of a democracy’s strength is whether the executive takes the legislature’s authority away. What the Italian, German, and Soviet systems had in common was the complete abolition of legislative authority—without, at first, any real public objection. Roosevelt and Truman consistently tried to shift authority from the legislative branch to the executive, but the United States never wound up venturing anywhere near a permanent diminution in Congress’s role. This was, Katznelson says, “a notable, even extraordinary, attainment.”


REMEMBER-----THE ECONOMIC CRASH AND SUBSEQUENT GREAT DEPRESSION WAS CAUSED BY THE SAME WALL STREET SYSTEMIC AND MASSIVE FRAUDS WE HAVE HAD THESE FEW DECADES WITH THE COMING US TREASURY AND MUNICIPAL BOND MARKET FRAUD MEANT TO BRING THE US ECONOMY DOWN JUST AS IN THE FDR DAYS.  NONE OF THIS IS DISCUSSED AS THEY DESCRIBE THE NEED FOR AUTHORITARIANISM BY THE SAME 1% COMMITTING THESE FRAUDS.


Concentrating far more intensely on Congress than New Deal histories aimed at a nonacademic audience have usually done naturally leads Katznelson to a concomitant focus on the essential role that the South played in the shaping of the New Deal. Anyone who ever took an American history course is aware that the South was an essential part of the Democratic Party coalition during the New Deal, and that during that period it maintained the Jim Crow system of legal racial segregation. By making this a major theme of Fear Itself and examining it in great detail, Katznelson removes the South’s place in the story from its usual duly noted blandness to an arresting, almost obsessive centrality. The New Deal made two great Faustian bargains with allies Katznelson would not hesitate to call evil, and they frame his idea of the New Deal: the one with Stalin and the one with the Jim Crow South. And it wasn’t just that the New Deal looked away from these systems’ horrors and proceeded on its way; it’s that the new political system the United States devised during the period was profoundly shaped by these unsavory alliances.
The South was of course Democratic because of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In the political bargain that ended Reconstruction, in 1877, the Republicans got the White House (for Rutherford B. Hayes) and the Democrats got the withdrawal of federal troops from the South—which meant that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution (guaranteeing African-Americans civil rights and voting rights) would no longer be enforced there, since they had been enforceable during Reconstruction only at gunpoint. The South was so profoundly grateful for this that it remained substantially loyal to the Democratic Party until the Democrats strongly reversed their previous position and endorsed the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Conversely, at the beginning of the New Deal, and for the same reasons, most black voters (who were necessarily outside the South) were still loyally voting Republican.
Katznelson reminds us that for large sections of the period he covers, including at the outset, the Democratic Party was not capable of winning a presidential election without the South (as is true of the Republican Party today). In the 1932 elections, Democratic congressional candidates outside the South, taken together, got only 40 percent of the vote, but 86 percent in the South. When Roosevelt took office, more than half the committee chairs in Congress were southerners.
Katznelson also reminds us that whites as well as blacks were substantially disenfranchised in the South, because of poll taxes. Voter turnout was shockingly low in the South—below 20 percent of eligible (meaning mainly white) voters, for example, in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina in the crucial presidential election of 1940. In the 1938 midterm elections, Mississippi, with a population of more than two million, had only 35,000 voters. A tight-knit group of very secure and long-serving southern politicians, for whom the maintenance of Jim Crow was an absolute necessity, used the congressional seniority system to maintain a working veto power over all New Deal policies.
In the narrow sense, the South used its power to create de facto regional exceptions to many New Deal policies, either by exempting domestic and agricultural workers (meaning blacks) from them, or by placing administrative and policy control of them in the hands of state governments. To use the most obvious example, the 1935 law that created the Social Security system had both of these features. In the larger sense, Katznelson argues, it was specifically the South that blocked off the possibility of the New Deal’s moving further left in its policies. The New Deal wound up largely achieving one set of goals—an American welfare state, including retirement security and an empowered labor movement—but stopped far short of another, which would have involved creating, through democratic procedures, a more centrally planned economy, like those of this country’s undemocratic, and evidently successful, competitors during the 1930s and 1940s.
This was not, Katznelson insists, a matter of Roosevelt’s changing his mind, or reacting to the setback of the Supreme Court’s undoing in 1935 of his first major foray into planning, the creation of the National Recovery Administration. Nor was there a national consensus on central planning. The period was too chaotic for any of that to be the case. It was Congress that blocked national planning, for reasons having to do with the southern bloc’s overriding concern with maintaining the regional racial order. The South, in Katznelson’s view, was willing to move left on economic issues as long as that didn’t threaten segregation. When economic policy and race began to seem intertwined, the South opted out on economic policy, and that defined the leftward boundary of the New Deal.
The turning point, Katznelson says, was the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, the law that established the federal minimum wage and “the last lawmaking victory of the New Deal’s radical moment.” Although the author of the earliest version of the law was Senator (later Justice) Hugo Black of Alabama, by 1937 the South’s support for federal legislation affecting working conditions had begun to crumble, because southern members of Congress no longer felt quite so confident that they could amend any law so that their system would be excluded. The national political power of organized labor, which was interested in enlisting blacks as well as whites, was rising rapidly, and there was now a distinct, though small, black voting bloc within the Democratic Party, located in the northern cities. With the South suddenly (though, it turned out, enduringly) in doubt, the FLSA barely passed, and only after a very long legislative struggle.
As the South was turning away from solidarity with Roosevelt on domestic issues, Roosevelt’s own attention was turning to the coming of World War II—and there, in Katznelson’s telling, the South was completely supportive, far more so than the rest of the country. The dominant strain in the Republican Party in those days was isolationist, and, as Katznelson reminds us, the northern, urban wing of the Democratic Party included many Italian-Americans, German-Americans, and Irish-Americans who were skeptical about the war.

Granger Collection

A poster for an all-black production of Macbeth, directed by John Houseman and Orson Welles, for the Works Progress Administration, 1936The South has always had a more martial culture than the country as a whole. Still, it isn’t entirely clear why the South was so militantly anti-Nazi—Adolf Hitler was a big fan of Gone With the Wind, and many prominent Nazis assumed that many in the South would find their racial views sympathetic, but they didn’t. The crucial steps before the Pearl Harbor attack that made the United States as prepared for the war as it was—including large increases in military spending, military aid to Great Britain, and the establishment of a draft—would all have been impossible without the enthusiastic backing of southerners in Congress. In return, the South got some assurances that the militarization of the United States would proceed in ways that did not threaten Jim Crow, such as the maintenance of segregated army units.
As with all the positive outcomes in Fear Itself, the United States’ turn away from isolationism came at a price: the embrace, once again determined by the South, of a national security state that operated in secrecy outside the ordinary boundaries of democratic politics. Roosevelt declared a national state of emergency, giving him extraordinary power, six months in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbor. From this followed loyalty oaths for federal employees, the Japanese internment program, and a vast, overaggressive FBI program of surveillance of people who hadn’t been accused of anything (including African-Americans solely on the basis of their race). The program entailed the establishment of a network of 70,000 civilian informants.


The House Un-American Activities Committee was created by John Nance Garner, of Texas, and chaired by Martin Dies, also of Texas. The Alien Registration Act, which wound up registering five million people and designating nearly a million of them as “enemy aliens” with restricted rights, was the work of Howard Smith, of Virginia. This turn by the federal government would come up as a regularly recurring aspect of Washington’s role in the life of the country. It is recurring now in the PRISM program and similar activities launched by George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama.
Because of the war, the turn toward central economic planning that the country declined to take in the 1930s happened almost overnight in the 1940s, through executive action rather than legislation. The federal government grew tenfold, established control over wages and prices, and was deeply involved in planning the activities of most American industries. As Katznelson puts it, “the country learned to act as if it were one great unified corporation.” World War II proved that the United States could compete successfully with nondemocratic countries, but at the price of becoming significantly less democratic itself.
Like the Great Depression and the ascension of Roosevelt, the end of the war provided an opportunity to remake the American political order. Katznelson places the South at the center of this process. Its influence in Congress had grown because Republican gains in the 1942 and 1946 elections had increased the southern share of Democratic seats. The larger setting for policymaking was fear, as it is throughout Katznelson’s account of the New Deal. The war may have ended, but the fear did not abate.
Roosevelt and Truman, through their choices about how to conduct the war, made the quick onset of the cold war almost inevitable. Roosevelt formed an alliance with a totalitarian state and then allowed it to bear most of the human cost of the war: the Soviet Union’s military death toll during the war was over twenty times that of the United States. This meant that when the war ended, the Soviets were in control of Eastern Europe and had no inclination to give that up. Truman’s decision to deploy two atomic bombs in Japan ensured that a gripping terror would pervade international relations for decades, if not forever. It turned out to be impossible for the United States to contemplate its postwar competition with the Soviets calmly.
Anything pertaining to the cold war wound up as a permanently large part of government, likely to be protected from the ordinary legislative processes of a democracy. The reason Susan Rice just became national security adviser rather than secretary of state is that the National Security Council was created after the war outside the sphere of congressional oversight, so her position doesn’t require a confirmation hearing.


The CIA dates from the same period. So does the Department of Defense and its headquarters building, the Pentagon. So does the Air Force and its aggressive branch devoted to planning nuclear war, the Strategic Air Command. Defense spending and the size of the standing military dropped precipitously with the end of the war, but soon soared again, and has ever since. The kind of planning process in which government collaborated with business—which Katznelson calls “corporatist”—became the rule, again permanently, in military and defense matters. The military became the dominant funder of scientific research, including inside private universities. All these changes amounted to the United States’s becoming what Katznelson calls “a crusading state” with “a permanent war economy.” And they were all enthusiastically endorsed, often without recorded votes, by a Congress (especially the committees that oversee military matters) dominated by the South.
Domestically, the process was the opposite: the United States, which might have created a social democratic system like Western Europe’s, instead scaled back. The two pieces of legislation that encapsulate the change from the height of the New Deal to the postwar order are the Wagner Act of 1935, empowering organized labor, and the antilabor Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Both had the South’s crucial support, and Katznelson attributes the change from one to the other to the South’s growing nervousness about its ability to maintain its racial order. “For southern legislators, labor had become race,” he writes, and Taft-Hartley was, to its southern supporters, a “triumph for the security of Jim Crow.”
Just as important as the shift in labor policy, Katznelson argues, was the idea that the government’s management of the economy should focus on taxation and spending, rather than on economic planning. In 1939, Congress established the National Resources Planning Board and the Bureau of the Budget; after the war, the former died and the latter became an important agency, now called the Office of Management and Budget. Agencies that could have established a larger central government part in the economy were prevented from doing so, for racial reasons, by the South. The United States Employment Service, quite a substantial operation, was taken out of the Department of Labor and put under the sort of local control that the South always favored. Southern offices routinely listed jobs as being for whites or blacks only.
The Fair Employment Practices Commission, created by Roosevelt in 1941 as a small wartime harbinger of the federal government’s commitment to civil rights, was abolished by Congress, against Truman’s wishes, after the war, because the South so deeply disliked it. Katznelson reminds us that the South’s role in the Democratic Party remained so crucial that both of Adlai Stevenson’s running mates in the presidential campaigns of 1952 and 1956 were southern senators, the first staunchly segregationist, the second less so.
Political scientists use the term “pluralist” to describe a system in which interest groups compete incessantly for advantage, and there is no overarching, determinative notion of the public interest. The side that wins gets to define the public interest, and the system’s moral commitment is to the procedure, not the outcomes. The final product of the New Deal, Katznelson argues, was a pluralist, “procedural” state in domestic affairs, and a far more expansive and less democratic state—corporatist, committed to planning in the “national interest”—in military affairs. This amounts to a liberal nightmare (and also demonstrates that one should not be confident that reducing interest-group influence in politics would necessarily produce pleasing results): the aspect of government liberals focus on was constrained, the aspect conservatives focus on was unbridled. And it was the South’s doing.
Ira Katznelson, who is a Columbia colleague of mine, has done something remarkable in Fear Itself in creating a large-scale, densely detailed tableau of the New Deal that feels fresh and unfamiliar. The book’s success comes partly from its insistent focus on material that lies outside the standard confines of the New Deal narrative, and partly from its powerfully tragic consciousness. Rather than seeing the New Deal as entailing a series of compromises, as with all politics, Katznelson presents us with a grand achievement, the preservation of American democracy, attained only through deeply corrupting alliances with Stalin’s Soviet Union and the pre–civil rights American South.
In Roth’s The Plot Against America, a relentlessly escalating series of horrors culminates in the Roth family of Newark being ordered to relocate to Kentucky (merely a border state!), where, we are made to understand, at any moment one of them could simply disappear. A similar feeling of utter horror about the South suffuses Fear Itself. The irony of Katznelson’s accomplishment here is that it has come, in part, through a Faustian bargain of his own: he has made the New Deal much more complex and interesting by oversimplifying one of its major actors.
Katznelson’s South has no black organizations of political consequence, no white racial liberals, no native union movement—indeed, very little internal variation on any issue, even though it’s a large region, because its focus on maintaining the Jim Crow system is so overwhelming. Although his account makes one appreciate how long the odds against the success of the civil rights movement were, it’s hard to imagine how, just a couple of years after Fear Itself ends, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference could have mounted its successful boycott of the municipal bus system in Montgomery; the elements underlying a nonquixotic act of resistance of that kind don’t seem to be in place.
More specifically, Katznelson’s treatment of race as the trump card in southern politics, though generally justified, leads him to treat the South’s views on economic issues as having been far less internally contentious and farther to the left than they actually were. Race could have been overwhelmingly important to the South and there could still have been—and was—room for differences on economic and other issues that had lasting regional and national effects.
On March 25, 1965, when Martin Luther King spoke from the steps of the Alabama state capitol building at the conclusion of the Selma-to-Montgomery march—a more dramatic civil rights moment, and a better speech, than “I Have a Dream” during the 1963 March on Washington—he devoted a significant part of his time at the podium to summarizing the work of historian C. Vann Woodward on economic strategies. It was an important intellectual event when the South began to produce prominent scholars—like Woodward (born in Vanndale, Arkansas, in 1908) and the political scientist V.O. Key (born in Austin, Texas, the same year)—who were not inclined to celebrate the Jim Crow system, as their predecessors going back to Woodrow Wilson had been.
Woodward and Key were pro–New Deal economic populists who spun out an alternate history of the South in which racism, rather than being the inevitable controlling factor in southern politics, had been put front and center by prosperous white conservatives so as to distract the poor majority from making common cause across racial lines and demanding economic justice. Here is King’s version, as delivered in Montgomery:
Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land.
You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.
It’s hard to think of academic work with more direct and immediate political consequences than Woodward’s mid-twentieth century conjuring up of a version of southern history in which Jim Crow had been avoidable in the first instance, and therefore was reversible in the present. Only a few months after King’s speech, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act (which the Supreme Court has just substantially negated) and liberal democracy in a recognizable if imperfect form came to the South.
Today Woodward’s view of southern history seems overoptimistic. The economically populist strain that he believed could have become dominant after Reconstruction seems retrospectively faint in comparison to white racism at the time. (Many more blacks were murdered in the late 1860s and early 1870s by white terrorists who were trying to overturn Reconstruction than were ever lynched.)
Even if Katznelson is essentially right, though, it’s a real stretch for him to present southern Bourbons like Harry Byrd of Virginia or James Eastland of Mississippi and bank-hating populists like Wright Patman of Texas or Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi as not having been meaningfully different politically. “Most of the region’s political leaders almost giddily propelled the New Deal’s radical economic policies,” Katznelson writes; these policies, he says elsewhere, “simply would have been impossible without the willing audacity of the segregated South.” But this is too dismissive of the importance of business-oriented “New South” conservatives who were active throughout the New Deal and became dominant afterward, and who were inclined to become a little less extreme on race, especially when they felt that doing so would bring economic rewards, and were anything but radical on nonracial domestic issues.
The people who created the South’s garment- and furniture-making industries, for example, had reasons to be anti-union that were more direct and immediate than the fear that unionization would undermine the racial order. They wanted to pay lower wages than their northern competitors. When Katznelson writes, by way of explaining southern opposition to pro-labor legislation in the late 1940s, that “a truly national labor system threatened to erode the ability of plantations to hold on to low-paid field-workers,” he is missing the South’s fundamental shift, already well underway, from Cotton Belt to Sunbelt (to borrow the title of an excellent 1994 book by Bruce Schulman).
The same political logic applies to the South’s oil, chemical, banking, and military-contracting industries, which were quite powerful by the end of the period Katznelson covers. They did not want their congressional representatives to push for radical economic policies. But neither did they want them to be focused on the maintenance of segregation to the exclusion of attending to their business interests. Whether or not Woodward (and King) were right that southern Bourbons had consciously used racism as a kind of ruse to get what they wanted economically, one can also make a reverse argument: southern business has tended to play down race if that seemed to serve economic development, for example in wooing northern companies to relocate to the South. And southern business has for many years reflexively turned to government for help, without having any populist inclinations. It practices what Katznelson calls “corporatism,” but as a matter just between government and business, without a substantial role for unions.
This isn’t a small matter. Katznelson argues persuasively that the basic political order of the United States was remade during the New Deal: government’s role expanded, but only up to a point, domestically, and expanded almost without limit militarily. But the variations within the South on nonracial issues also became nationally consequential.
Beginning with Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat defection from the Democratic Party in 1948, the South became less solidly Democratic—rapidly so after the height of the civil rights era. That was about race. Also, beginning with Jimmy Carter in 1976, the South began to demonstrate that it could produce successful presidential candidates (I’m not counting Lyndon Johnson because he was elevated from the vice-presidency), something that had not been possible during most of the Jim Crow era, when congressional leadership positions were the most that even the most talented southern politicians could aspire to. Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush all became major-party nominees, and although they did not all come from the same party, they all ran as more or less moderate, pro-business politicians who were sensitive to middle-class voters’ needs and did not openly appeal to white racial prejudice. This set of views, which dominated presidential politics for years, emerged from a tradition of business-oriented politics in the South—going back at least to the 1880s, when Henry Grady of The Atlanta Constitution began using the phrase “The New South” to express the hope of a move beyond dependence on agriculture—which Katznelson doesn’t mention.
That period of high southern influence on national politics may now be over. Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama in 2008 in part because she attended too closely during the Democratic primary season to the lessons she had learned in becoming a southern moderate during her years in Arkansas. The Democratic Leadership Council, the moderate-to-conservative group that both Clinton and Gore chaired, has gone out of business. The Democrats have found a way to win presidential elections that largely bypasses the South (but not Florida), and the Republicans are dominated by a libertarian strain in the party that doesn’t have much room for blacks but also doesn’t have roots in traditional southern politics.
Still, even in the Obama administration, a moderate, pro-market, anti-regulation, less than wholeheartedly pro-union politics dominates. So does the idea that military and “security” affairs can be legitimately conducted in secret by the executive branch. This is partly a legacy of a long-standing congeries of southern views that can’t be completely understood in racial terms. Conversely, one lesson of the Obama presidency thus far is that even the immense effort the president obviously makes to take overt considerations of race out of politics—the passion and eloquence of his brief remarks about the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case gave some sense of how much he is usually suppressing—does not produce the benefits in other areas that liberals have dreamed of for many years. It has not led to the undoing of the frustrating aspects of the legacy of the New Deal, as Katznelson persuasively sets them forth.

______________________________________

Again, if we have the 1% in the US at the time of the Great Depression calculating a national political structure resembling Stalin or Mussolini you can assume it has nothing to do with left-leaning Marxism----it is simply a political tool for the 1% to reign authoritarian and militaristic power while keeping everyone else impoverished and living in fear.  As well, it takes religion with morals and ethics out of the picture as the 1% expand empire.  That is who Mussolini was----he joined Hitler because they shared that same nationalistic empire-building capturing nation's economies and industries to a corporate state.  Left-leaning Marxism does not want those kinds of hierarchical structures-----only far-right 1% wants dictators and fascism to advance empire-building.

We know those small percentage back in FDR's days wanting a fascist model for the US are indeed the 1% having captured our political system today and it does not bode well for religious institutions. 

When Obama, Gov of Maryland Larry Hogan, Mayor of Baltimore Rawlings-Blake all marching to 1% Wall Street push all this deregulation of public schools with defunding of public schools and moving of those funds to private and religious schools all the while having that goal of global corporate neo-liberal profit-driven education -----THEY ARE ALL POSING RELIGIOUS.  National religious leaders who appoint state and local religious leaders to every kind of religious sector align themselves with that 1% power----empire-building as the CRUSADES perhaps moves religions into this militaristic mode.  Whatever the motivation of national or global world religious leaders at these times -----they all know global corporate and wealth fascism is not what GOD WOULD WANT FOR PEOPLE.  These global/national religious leaders KNOW that to partner with these 1% Wall Street global pols is to partner with a criminal, unjust class of people.  This is the conditions existing today in the US at national, state, and local level and it is why all this extreme wealth and corporate power CORRUPTS OUR RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. 



It's the Corporate State, Stupid

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini. 


“Kirchnerismo” is the legacy of the 12 years that Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her late husband, Néstor, have run this country, a spin on the “Peronismo” of Juan and Evita Perón. And like the 1950s-era edition, it is less an ideology than a ruling style, defined by the concentration of power, populist ­social welfare programs and a steady diet of Argentine nationalism.



'since the end of World War II, Argentina swings endlessly between expansionist/populist and neoliberal regimes'.

Everyone knows that Latin American nations captured by neo-liberalism----like Chile and Argentina and now Brazil have these rotating cycles of wild unfettered neo-liberalism where the rich simply take the national wealth and send everyone to poverty followed by a 'socialism' that takes a militaristic, authoritarian look of fascism as we see here with the Kirchner's and their FASCIST KIRCHNERISMO.  Then after the nation is taken from economic ruin while sending the poor free stuff-----back comes the neo-liberal leader taking the nation again for all its assets.  This pattern has existed through modern history and this is why today's American leadership in Congress/Obama/Wall Street/FED are moving towards the MAO corporate fascism model.  The difference between this Latin American neo-liberal model and the MAO fake communist model is the removal of religion through a period of extreme militarism and government brutality.  Where was religious institutions during the STALIN/MAO/HITLER/MUSSOLINI/KIRCHNER fascist cycle of extreme wealth and corporate power expansion?

Our religious institutions are very powerful and although we do not want them leading a nation into revolution in fighting against authoritarianism and brutal impoverishment of people under a small group calling people HUMAN CAPITAL AND TOOLS FOR PROFIT----we would not expect these religious leaders to partner with the 1% in patronage.

THIS PERIOD OF SENDING THE US INTO A MARXIST STAGE IS WHAT THE 1% CALLS THE HIDDEN STAGE OF NEO-LIBERALISM----THEY INTEND TO MOVE FORWARD WITH NEO-LIBERALISM BUT DRESS IT DIFFERENTLY.

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

Argentina under the Kirchners

Socialism for foes, capitalism for friends

While some private businesses in Argentina have faced harassment or even nationalisation, others have flourished thanks to political contacts
Feb 25th 2010 | BUENOS AIRES | THE ECONOMIST

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


April 12, 2016

Macri-nomics: Argentina’s Fast and Furious Return to Neoliberalism

by Alan B. Cibles



When on October 25, 2015, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s (CFK) designated presidential candidate, Daniel Scioli, won the first round of elections by a 3% margin, many viewed it as a defeat. There are good reasons for this.
Most polls had predicted Scioli would obtain at least an 8% lead over Mauricio Macri, the pro-business, pro-US neoliberal candidate. Some had even predicted a wider lead, fueling hopes that a runoff election could be avoided.
Also, few considered Macri would ever get enough votes to become president and yet, there he was, very well positioned for the runoff election a month later.
Finally, many of CFK’s supporters remembered her 54% victory in the 2011 presidential elections and believed that a similar outcome was possible for her candidate in 2015.
The Nov. 22 runoff election between Daniel Scioli and Mauricio Macri took place resulted in a Macri victory by 2.68%. This result marked two important landmarks in Argentine political history. First, it was the first electoral defeat of a Peronist presidential candidate ever. Peronist candidates also lost key electoral districts, such as the province of Buenos Aires and several historically Peronist working class municipalities in the greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area. Second, Macri’s victory is the first time that a member of Argentina’s economic elite became president through elections and not through a military coup.
On December 10, 2015 Macri took office as President of Argentina. Exactly fourteen years before, in December 2001, Argentina was in political and economic chaos, the product of a decade of profound neoliberal transformations. Massive protests took place daily against banks, the IMF, neoliberal policies and corrupt politicians. “¡Que se vayan todos!” (Out with all of them!) was the rallying cry of the protestors. Why then was an explicitly neoliberal president elected fourteen years after the crisis? What can we expect to happen based on Macri’s first 100 days in office? What are the implications for regional cooperation?


Twelve Years of Kirchnerismo


Néstor Kirchner took office on May 25, 2003 as the massive 2001-2002 political and economic crisis was beginning to wind down. The country was still in significant political and economic turmoil, the product of more than a decade of neoliberal economic policies, which resulted in deindustrialization, substantial increases in inequality, unemployment, poverty and hunger, financial speculation and unsustainable public debt growth. Popular discontent and mobilization were high, with strong anti-IMF and anti-neoliberalism sentiment widely expressed. A wide anti-politician sentiment prevailed, with most politicians perceived as corrupt and inefficient.
Kirchner, and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, were shrewd politicians, although relatively unknown outside their southern province of Santa Cruz. While as provincial governor Néstor and his wife had supported the neoliberal policies and privatizations of the 1990s, they accurately read the new political situation and tuned their campaign discourse and later government policies to cater to the profound popular discontent. Néstor served one four-year term (2003-2007) and Cristina two consecutive terms (2007-2011 and 2011-2015). The successes and failures of Kirchnerism are central to deciphering the 2015 election results.
The Kirchners helped set in motion a series of trials for human rights abuses committed during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. This resulted in support from human rights groups and broad segments of society.
Néstor Kirchner also promoted the renewal of the highly discredited Menem-era Supreme Court, establishing a more participatory and transparent nomination process to fill vacancies. The Kirchners also promoted the expansion of social and civil rights, passing a national gay marriage law, a “universal” subsidy for children, social security benefits for retired housewives, and other social programs.
Both Kirchners revitalized the role of the State as a fundamental institution for economic development, and to keep powerful actors in check. Economic performance between 2003 and 2009 was very good, with high growth rates, employment creation, and overall improvement in social indicators. These factors and a combative, generally progressive rhetoric gained them support from broad sectors of the population.
However, there were aspects of the Kirchner administrations, especially CFK’s, which impacted negatively on public opinion. When inflation began to increase in 2006, rather than trying to diagnose it and effectively deal with it, the Kirchners chose to gut the national statistics agency, producing data to their liking but quite unrelated to reality. As a result, Argentina was left without credible official data on the economy, employment, poverty, etc., and an annual inflation rate above 20% between 2007 and 2015. High inflation, an inconsistent exchange rate policy, and a decreasing trade surplus led to increasing capital flight and eventually the imposition of exchange controls (people were not allowed to freely purchase foreign currency), leaving people few legal options to safeguard any savings from inflation. These factors, together with a slowing economy since 2011, resulted in an increasing erosion of support for CFK. Her combative rhetoric, considered divisive by many, and multiple weekly national addresses drove many voters to vote for a “change”.



Macri’s Campaign–Promises of Change


Like the Kirchners, Macri too is a product of the massive Argentine 2001-2002 crisis. However, rather than adopting an explicitly ideological political rhetoric, he adopted the “anti-politics” or “outsider” approach. As a two term mayor of the City of Buenos Aires (2007-2011 and 2011-2015), Macri always campaigned as the political outsider, with a private sector background, whose only interest was to improve people’s quality of life. The way to do this was solving problems with technical efficiently, avoiding unnecessary and inefficient political discussions. (Whether after eight years in office as mayor of the City of Buenos Aires he really qualifies as an outsider is subject to debate, however, that continues to be a part of his strategy which people, apparently, buy.)
For many, this non-confrontational, technocratic style was a breath of fresh air compared to CFK’s combative and ideological discourse. Macri’s presidential campaign centered on a few relatively empty slogans about uniting Argentines, “returning to the world” (i.e. financial markets), ending exchange restrictions, fighting inflation and, surprisingly for a right wing candidate, ending poverty (pobreza cero).[1] Macri also cleverly stated that his intention was to continue the good things of the Kirchner governments and review those that needed improvement—in other words, one should expect a fair amount of continuity.
Macri’s economic team was instructed to curtail public statements during the campaign, since their policy proposals would likely scare voters away. Still, from what little they did say it was clear that there would be an orthodox, pro-austerity turn. Macri’s economists promised inflation targeting, a floating exchange rate, and an independent central bank—all standard IMF-promoted policies around the world. In addition, they spoke in favor of free trade agreements, re-aligning Argentina’s foreign policy with that of the US (and away from other center-left Latin American countries). In other words, they clearly favored a return to free-market policies, to international financial markets, debt accumulation, etc.
The First 100 Days–Wall Street In Charge (Again)
Macri took office on December 10, 2015 and very quickly went to work on his version of “change.” He took a number of bold steps during his first 100 days in power, steps that in clearly differentiate his administration from those of the last 12 years. Macri’s economics team is made up of ultra-neoliberal economists, former international bank execs, and former transnational corporation CEOs. Such is the corporate bias in Macri’s economics cabinet, that some in the press have dubbed his government a CEOcracy, the government of the CEOs. Blumberg.com went even further—a March 8, 2016 article proclaimed: “Wall Street is in charge in Argentina (again)”.

The policies so far implemented tend to confirm this:


Devaluation.

Very early on Macri’s economics team eliminated the exchange restrictions, liberating the foreign exchange market from the controls it had had for the last four years. Liberating the exchange market, however, resulted in a 40% currency devaluation and, consequently, a spike in inflation. During Macri’s first 100 days in office inflation was approximately 12%. Inflation is problematic because it erodes purchasing power of workers on fixed income providing windfall profits to exporters.


Export tax elimination.

Another policy implemented by Macri shortly after taking office was the elimination of export taxes on all agricultural exports except soya, and some minerals (such as gold). Export taxes were implemented in the aftermath of the 2001-2002 crisis after a major currency devaluation. Export taxes are important in a country like Argentina that exports primary products, many of which are locally consumed. First, it de-links domestic prices from world prices, reducing the impact of a devaluation on local prices and product availability. Second, it puts a cap on export sector profits, transferring a part to the state (which in turn can use those funds for public programs). The elimination of these subsidies fed into the inflation caused by the devaluation and provided an additional boost to export-sector profits.


Macroeconomic policy.

The removal of exchange controls was the first move in the implementation of an inflation targeting monetary policy and, eventually, a freely floating exchange rate. This is the policy framework promoted by the IMF and the US Treasury, which focuses exclusively on keeping inflation as low as possible, ignoring other policy objectives such as high levels of employment, economic development and income distribution. So far, the result has been very high interest rates (38% in pesos and 20% in US dollars), providing windfall profits for the banking sector, a deepening of the economic slowdown and no effect on inflation.


Massive public sector layoffs.

During his presidential campaign, Macri repeatedly promised that no state worker who was actually working needed to worry about losing their job. However, his actions from his first day in office show that his campaign promises were empty words. Spearheaded by the newly created State Modernization Ministry, many thousands of state workers have been fired. According to one organization that tracks layoffs, by March 18, 2016 almost 32,000 public-sector workers had lost their jobs at all levels of government.[2] It is expected that many more layoffs will come as contracts come up for renewal throughout the year. Despite a resounding lack of historical evidence that a minimalist State ever led to economic development, Macri and his team of CEOs believe that the State should be as small as possible and not intervene in the economy, since the “market knows best.” In this way, Macri has begun to dismantle key State productive enterprises revitalized during the Kirchner years.
Surrender to vulture funds (and Wall Street). In 2012, when Judge Griesa of the New York District Court issued an outrageous ruling in favor of the vulture funds[3]—a ruling that was upheld by the appeals court and the US Supreme Court—Macri, then mayor of the City of Buenos Aires, said that he believed one had to comply and pay up. In this way, he took distance from CFK’s more combative, non-compliance stance. As president, Macri rapidly set in motion negotiations to pay off the vulture funds and remaining defaulted bond-holders (known as hold-outs).[4] An agreement was met, which looks a lot more like a capitulation, which will require issuing bonds for $12 billion, a 10% increase in the stock of Argentina’s dollar-denominated public debt. However, to be able to pay off the vultures the Argentine Congress needs to repeal two laws that currently prohibit such payments. In order to get the needed congressional votes, Macri used scare tactics saying that if Congress didn’t repeal the laws, the country would fall into hyperinflation. In other words: “vultures or hyperinflation,”[5] a dramatic discourse change from CFK’s “homeland or vultures.”
Free trade and unilateral alignment with US. Macri explicitly campaigned on what he called “returning to the world” (volver al mundo), which essentially means returning to neoliberalism, free trade and an explicit alignment with US economic and foreign policy interests. Macri’s economic policy initiatives, vulture fund capitulation, and returning to IMF tutelage are indicators of what “returning to the world” means. However, the clearest example of Argentina’s new stance in the world was the visit by US President Barak Obama on March 23-24. President Obama praised Marci’s economic policies and set him as an example for Latin America. The agreements signed between the two presidents cater to a broad range of US interests, including security, the war on drugs, intellectual property rights, and free trade.[6]



Closing Thoughts


Argentina’s shift to neoliberalism and unconditional alignment with the US are viewed with concern by those who remember the country’s experience during the 1990s and the massive 2001-2002 crisis. Macri’s policies so far (especially the devaluation and export-tax elimination) have resulted in the greatest transfer of income from working people to banks and exporters in decades. Furthermore, public sector layoffs, when added to substantial private sector layoffs and a recessionary macroeconomic policy framework are resulting in a deepening economic slowdown.
Macri’s alignment with the US is also a clear break with the Kirchner’s policies of strengthening regional political and commercial ties. The Kirchner’s were clearly aligned with Venezuela (Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro), Ecuador (Rafael Correa), Bolivia (Evo Morales) and Brazil (Lula da Silva and Dilma Rouseff) and against the US security and free trade agenda. Those days are over, at least while Macri is in office. It is unclear what direction MERCOSUR (the Southern Cone regional trade block) will take, but Chávez’s and Lula’s regional political initiatives, ALBA and UNASUR, are no longer priorities for Argentina under Macri.
Argentina continues to be caught in what the late economist Aldo Ferrer, and Marcelo Diamand before him, called the Argentine pendulum: since the end of World War II, Argentina swings endlessly between expansionist/populist and neoliberal regimes. Each phase has its period of expansion and crisis, leading to the next. After twelve years of expansionist/populist Kirchnerismo, Argentina is now headed to neoliberalism once again. If the pendulum continues its trajectory, and if past neoliberal cycles are an indication, the future is not a bright one.
If there is a sign of hope, it is that workers and the poor have a substantial degree of organization after twelve years of kirchnerismo. On February 24th public sector workers went on strike and there was huge mobilization to Plaza de Mayo, the historic site of many protests across from the Pink House (the seat of the executive branch of government). On March 24th, the 40th anniversary of the military coup, a massive demonstration filled Plaza de Mayo and the streets around for many blocks. Unions, political and social organizations flocked massively to the Plaza in remembrance, but also to protest Obama’s presence and Macri’s neoliberal policies. Time will tell if Macri’s opposition is able organize an electoral alternative before the next crisis hits.
_______________________________________
It was the revolutions of 1700s in Europe and US and with that social Democracy taking people from this extreme wealth and extreme poverty with religion simply tied to the 1% to that of religious freedoms and people as those having power within their individual religious institutions.  Even the Catholic Church with those strongest ties to the 1% became more liberal in seeing people as citizens with rights and not subjects to the rich.  The public sector and separation of church and state allowed citizens that space to have that power as citizen---with the church mission tied more closely to those citizen members.

No one knows better than our religious leadership how American democratic and US Constitutional rights as citizens protect and empower people from the injustice of those few seeking extreme wealth and power-----and they know today's CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA march to ONE WORLD GLOBAL CORPORATE TRIBUNAL RULE has brutality and injustice as a goal. 

WHY WOULD RELIGIOUS LEADERS PARTNER IN BREAKING DOWN PUBLIC EDUCATION AND SCHOOLS KNOWING THIS AUTHORITARIAN 1% GOAL?

I turn to Dante not because the Catholic Church has dibs on far-right repressive orders that tie with the 1% because all religions do---I reach for Dante because he is known worldwide as a writer having best identified and described this problem for REAL religious citizens.


Just looking at the titles ascribed to Dante's level just for what we have today in the US------allows anyone to see what Dante had back then is what we have today and this Circle 8 deals with Dante's religious and political leaders he knew were all corrupt for their own personal gain----THE PRAGMATIC NILISTS of the DARK AGES.  I like that Dante placed these SINNERS at the bottom of the levels of Hades-----

Circle 8, subcircles 1-6, cantos 18-23
 

 
Headings
Fraud: Pimping and Seducing (18), Flattery (18), Simony (19), Sorcery (20), Political Corruption (21-2), Hypocrisy (23)
 
Icons
Jason (18), Pope Nicholas III (19), Malebranche (21-2), Ciampolo (22), Caiaphas (23)
 
Allusions
Malebolge (18), Simon Magus (19), Pope Boniface VIII (19), Pope Clement V (19), Donation of Constantine (19), Mantua (20), Harrowing of Hell (21)

 
Fraud: Pimping and Seducing (18), Flattery (18), Simony (19), Sorcery (20), Political Corruption (21-2), Hypocrisy (23)
 

 
The offenses of circles 8 and 9--the lowest two circles of hell--all fall under the rubric of fraud, a form of malice--as Virgil explains in Inferno 11.22-7--unique to human beings and therefore more displeasing to God than sins of concupiscence and violence. While all versions of fraud involve the malicious use of reason, circles 8 and 9 are distinguished from one another according to the offender's relationship to his or her victim: those who victimize someone with whom they share a special bond of trust (relatives, political / civic comrades, guests, benefactors) are punished in the lowest circle; if there exists no bond besides the "natural" one common to all humanity, the guilty soul suffers in one of the ten concentric ditches that constitute circle 8.
 
Physically connected by bridges, the ditches of circle 8 contain fraudulent shades whose particular vices and actions similarly serve to interconnect the cantos and their themes in this part of the poem. Thus the pimps and seducers, whipped by horned demons in the first ditch, relate to the flatterers--disgustingly dipped in the excrement of the second ditch--through the sexualized figure of Thais, a prostitute from the classical tradition who falsely praises her "lover" (Inf. 18.127-35). These first two ditches are presented in a single canto (18). Images of degraded sexuality are even more prominent in the next canto (19). Here Dante presents simony--the abuse of power within the church--as a form of spiritual prostitution, fornication, and rape (Inf. 19.1-4; 55-7; 106-11), a perversion of the holy matrimony conventionally posited between Christ (groom) and the church (bride). Simon Magus, the man for whom simony is named (Inf. 19.1), was himself a magician or sorcerer, the profession of those punished in the fourth ditch (canto 20). Simony and Sorcery are further linked through biographical declarations--by Dante and Virgil, respectively--aimed at separating truth from falsehood: Dante sets the record straight when he announces that he shattered a marble baptismal basin to prevent someone from drowning in it (Inf. 19.19-21); and Virgil is equally emphatic that his native city, Mantua, was named after the prophetess Manto with no recourse to such dubious rituals as casting lots or interpreting signs (Inf. 20.91-3; 97-9). Political corruption (fifth ditch), the crime for which Dante himself was falsely charged when he was forced into exile, links back to similar abuses within the church (simony) and points ahead to the sin of hypocrisy. The longest single episode of the Inferno, launched when Virgil confidently believes the promise of the devils guarding the fifth ditch, concludes when the travelers make a narrow escape into the sixth ditch and Virgil learns from a hypocrite that he has been duped (Inf. 23.133-48). Dante adorns the hypocrites in religious garb--hooded cloaks similar to the elegant ones worn by the Benedictine monks at Cluny (in France)--in accordance with the biblical condemnation of false piety: just as Jesus compares hypocritical scribes and Pharisees to tombs that appear clean and beautiful on the outside while containing bones of the dead (Matthew 23:27), so the bright golden cloaks of Dante's hypocrites conceal heavy lead on the inside (Inf. 23.64-6).

Pope Nicholas III (19)
 

 
Nicholas is the simonist pope who, because he is upside down in a hole, mistakenly believes Dante to be Pope Boniface VIII, somehow present in the third pit several years before his time (Inf. 19.52-7). When the confusion is cleared up, Nicholas informs Dante that he foresees the damnation (for simony) of not only Boniface VIII but Pope Clement V as well. Born into the powerful Orsini family of Rome, Giovanni Gaetano was appointed head of the Inquisition (1262) before being elected pope--taking the name Nicholas--in 1277. Nicholas expanded papal political control by adding parts of Romagna, as far north as Bologna and Ferrara, and he forged a compromise in the Franciscan movement between the moderates and the radical spiritualists. He was known, on the one hand, for his high moral standards and care for the poor, and on the other for his shameless nepotism (derived from the Italian word--nipote--for nephew, niece, and grandchild): Nicholas himself states that he was guilty of favoring the "cubs" in his family (Orsini, the family name, translates to "little bears"; Inf. 19.70-2)--he in fact filled positions for three new cardinals with relatives and appointed other relatives to high posts in the papal state. Nicholas died in 1280 and was buried in St. Peter's in Rome.
 
back to top
 
Malebranche (21-2)
 

 
Dante invents this name--"Evil Claws"--for the devils of the fifth ditch who bring to hell and torment the shades of corrupt political officials and employees (Inf. 21.29-42). Like the velociraptors of Jurassic Park, these demonic creatures are agile, smart, and fierce. Armed with long hooks, the Malebranche keep the shades under the surface of the black pitch, similar to how cooks use sharp implements to push chunks of meat down into cauldrons (21.55-7). Consistent with the political theme of the episode, it is likely that Dante mischievously combines history and fantasy in coining names for individual demons-- "Bad Dog", "Sneering Dragon", "Curly Beard", and so on--based on actual family names of civic leaders in Florence and surrounding towns. As the narrator says, "with saints in church, with guzzlers in the tavern!" (Inf. 22.14-15).
 
Malacoda, the leader of the demons, may not be based on any particular person but his name--"Evil Tail"--strongly suggests that it is he (and not Barbariccia, as the Mandelbaum translation supposes) who sends off his troops by making "a bugle of his ass" (21.139).
 
back to top
 
Ciampolo (22)
 

 
Ciampolo (an Italianized version of Jean-Paul), according to the early commentators, is the name of the Navarrese who is tortured by the Malebranche in the fifth pit (political corruption) before a clever escape: he promises to summon his peers to the surface but then jumps back into the black pitch as soon as the Malebranche back off (Inf. 22.31-123). Nothing else is known of this character beyond what Dante provides in the poem. Navarre was a small kingdom in the south of France (in the Pyrenees), and the "good King Thibault" in whose service Ciampolo took bribes (Inf. 22.52-4) was probably Thibault II (King of Navarre from 1255-70).
 
back to top
 
Caiaphas (23)
 

 
Caiaphas is the high priest of Jerusalem who, according to Christian scripture, advises a council of chief priests and Pharisees that it is expedient that "one man should die for the people" so that "the whole nation perish not" (John 11:50). Considering this proclaimed interest in the welfare of his people to be false and self-serving, Dante places Caiaphas among the hypocrites in the sixth pit, with an added contrapasso: because Caiaphas and other members of the council (including Caiaphas' father-in-law, Annas) supposedly called on the Romans to crucify Jesus (John 18:12-40; 19:1-18), they are now themselves crucified to the floor of the pit (Inf. 23.109-20). Here Dante endorses the repugnant view of Jesus' crucifixion as justification for the persecution of Jews (Inf. 23.121-3).
 
back to top
 
Malebolge (18)
 

 
This is the name Dante gives to circle 8, which consists of ten concentric ravines or ditches: male means "evil" and bolgia is a Tuscan dialect word for "purse" or "pouch." Malebolge therefore translates to "Evil Pouches." Dante describes the overall structure of circle 8--similar to moats (with connecting bridges) around a castle--in Inferno 18.1-18, even before the travelers pass through the region. Dante likely saw the layout of the entire Malebolge when he descended aboard Geryon from circle 7 to circle 8 (Inf. 17.115-26).
 
back to top
 
Simon Magus (19)
 
Simon Magus, the original simonist (Inf. 19.1), is described in the Bible as a man from Samaria famous for his magical powers (magus means wizard or magician). Recently converted and baptized, Simon is so impressed with the ability of the apostles Peter and John to confer the Holy Spirit (through the laying on of hands) that he offers them money to obtain and practice this power himself; Peter angrily denounces Simon for even thinking this gift could be bought (Acts 8:9-24). An apocryphal book, Acts of Peter, tells of a magic contest between the apostle and Simon, now the magician of the emperor Nero in Rome. When Simon--with the aid of a demon--proceeds to fly, Peter crosses himself and Simon crashes to the ground.
 
back to top
 
Pope Boniface VIII
 
Boniface, for Dante, is personal and public enemy number one. Benedetto Caetani, a talented and ambitious scholar of canon law, rose quickly through the ranks of the church and was elected pope, as Boniface VIII, soon after the abdication of Pope Celestine V in 1294. (There were rumors that Boniface had intimidated Celestine into abdicating so he could become pope himself.) Boniface's pontificate was marked by a consolidation and expansion of church power, based on the view--expressed in a papal bull (Unam sanctam)--that the pope was not only the spiritual head of Christendom but also superior to the emperor in the secular, temporal realm. Dante, by contrast, firmly held that the pope and emperor should be co-equals with a balance of power between the pope's spiritual authority and the emperor's secular authority. Boniface's political ambitions directly affected Dante when the pope--under the false pretense of peace-making--sent Charles of Valois, a French prince, to Florence; Charles' intervention allowed the black guelphs to overthrow the ruling white guelphs, whose leaders--including Dante, in Rome at the time to argue Florence's case before Boniface--were sentenced to exile. Dante now settles his score with Boniface in the Divine Comedy by damning the pope even before his death in 1303 (the journey takes place in 1300): in the pit of the simonists, Pope Nicholas III, who can see the future (like all the damned), mistakenly assumes that Dante is Boniface come before his time (Inf. 19.49-63).
 
back to top
 
Pope Clement V (19)
 
Pope Nicholas III, the simonist pope who mistakes Dante for Pope Boniface VIII, foresees the arrival of another simonist--even "uglier in deeds" (Inf. 19.82)--who will stuff Nicholas and Boniface farther down in the hole when he takes his place upside down with his legs and feet in view. This "lawless shepherd from the west" (83) is Bertrand de Got, a French archbishop who owed his election to the papacy in 1305, as Pope Clement V, to King Philip IV of France, similar to how Jason--a figure in the Bible (2 Maccabees 4:7-26)--became High Priest by bribing King Antiochus (85-7). In return for this support, Clement moved the Papal See from Rome to Avignon (in southern France) in 1309, an action so abhorrent to many (Dante for sure) that it came to be known as the "Babylonian Captivity." This situation lasted until 1377, after which there were sometimes two popes (or pope and anti-pope, according to one's perspective), one each in Rome and France. The "Great Schism" ended in 1417 with the definitive return of the papacy to Rome.
 
back to top
 
Donation of Constantine (19)
 
It was believed in the late Middle Ages that Constantine, the first Christian emperor (288-337 C.E.), transferred political control of Italy (and other parts of the West) to the church when he moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzantium--hence "Constantinople"--in the East. Legend held that Constantine gave this gift to Pope Sylvester I, whose baptism of the emperor had cured him of leprosy. Dante, who thought the world better served with political power in the hands of the emperor, bitterly blamed this event for the dire consequences of a wealthy papacy (Inf. 19.115-7). The document that authorized this transfer of power--popularly called the "Donation of Constantine"--was proved by Lorenzo Valla in the fifteenth century to be a fake, probably written in the papal court or in France several centuries after Constantine's death.

__________________________________________
What does all this have to do with Baltimore's public school system disappearing in the midst of total privatization to a corporate charter structure tied to global corporate campuses and global factories we know will enslave and bring third world brutal living conditions to a stable, democratic, freedom-loving America?

This  battle in the US over public financing of private schools including religious schools have as I said been ongoing.  All citizens pay taxes and public schools receive tax funding so the argument has been it should go to all kinds of schools.  Our Federal tax revenue has always gone to public schools because spending Federal tax revenue comes with equity and opportunity. Citizens advocating for privatizing our public schools and with that public funding see as their right to SCHOOL CHOICE will not end that way.  The citizens paying the most in taxes will be those 90% in the worst of education conditions.  Besides that inequity------a thousand years of history has shown when government funds religion it almost always leads to AN END TO RELIGIOUS FREEDOM because---as Maryland Governor Hogan states with his decision to create funds for private school funding has done---CREATING A COMMITTEE WHO DECIDES HOW THOSE FUNDS ARE DISTRIBUTED.  There goes equity and opportunity and here comes the same cronyism that fills Maryland and Baltimore.  We already know there will be winners and losers----and folks should be able to look beyond today to see the abuses such policies will bring.  As likely, setting aside special funds for private schooling will ultimately END as soon as the DEREGULATION OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL STRUCTURE -----WHICH IS THE GOAL-----and these religious leaders lining up for public funds already know this.


BELOW YOU SEE ONE CASE OF HOW THIS BECOMES A SLIPPERY SLOPE AND VOILA------ONE OR NO RELIGION BECOMES THE END PRODUCT.

One can just see the writing on the wall----OH WELL---we will just privatize K-12 to solve this problem of religious discrimination. It would not take long to occur.  That would end both public schools and religious schools and send all to global corporate campus schools being the goal of 1% Wall Street.

Israeli Christian schools strike to protest cuts in public funding



By Michele Chabin | September 8, 2015

Christian Scouts lead the rallying cry for equality during a demonstration demanding higher government funding for Israel's Christian schools on September 6, 2015.


Religion News Service photo by Michele Chabin


An ongoing strike over reduced government funding to Israel’s 47 Christian schools has kept 33,000 Christian and Muslim students home for a week. Teachers, students and parents held a rally outside the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem on September 6, 2015. Religion News Service photo by Michele Chabin


JERUSALEM (RNS) Israel’s 47 Christian schools are entering the second week of an open-ended strike to protest ongoing cuts in government allocations, which they attribute to government discrimination against minority religious groups.
The schools, 40 of them Catholic, teach 33,000 Christian and Muslim Arab students in central and northern Israel.
Officials from various Christian denominations called the strike on Aug. 31, after nearly two years of negotiations with the Ministry of Education failed to convince the government to reinstate the funding it has withdrawn from the country’s semi-private schools during the past six years.
That funding once covered up to 75 percent of the schools’ operating costs. Today that number has dropped to 29 percent, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
Christian Scouts lead the rallying cry for equality during a demonstration demanding higher government funding for Israel’s Christian schools on September 6, 2015. Religion News Service photo by Michele Chabin
On Sunday (Sept. 6) thousands of parents, students and teachers demonstrated opposite the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem to demand the same level of funding the government provides to two ultra-Orthodox Jewish school networks that, like the Christian schools, are not part of the public school system.
On Monday, 450,000 Arab students in non-Christian public schools held a one-day solidarity strike.
Israel’s Jewish schools are backed by ultra-Orthodox political parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sliver-thin coalition government. Without the parties’ support, the government would fall, resulting in new elections.
Our children are Israeli and should have the same rights,” said the Rev. Abdel Masih, general director of Catholic Schools in Israel.
Wadie Abunassar, an adviser to the Catholic Church, said the Christian school budgeting crisis is part of the Israeli government’s “systematic discrimination” toward the country’s minorities. Christians comprise just 2 percent of the Israeli population while Muslims comprise roughly 20 percent.
“This is not acceptable in a country which claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East,” Abunassar said.
The Ministry of Education said in a statement that Christian schools “are supported equally, the way other unofficial but recognized institutions are supported” and that it is holding “ongoing meetings with representatives of the Christian educational institutions.”
During the past six years government budget cuts have hurt semi-private schools, known as “unofficial but recognized schools,” by greatly decreasing funding for their operating expenses. The Education Ministry also capped tuition fees.
During negotiations the Christian schools rejected the ministry’s suggestion to become “special schools” — a status that would permit them to charge higher tuition but not receive additional government funding — “because this will put a heavy load on the parents,” the Office of Catholic schools said in an Aug. 31 statement. Becoming public schools would mean a loss of autonomy, the officials said.
________________________________________

Not only the threat of discriminatory competition BETWEEN RELIGIOUS institutions but then all that civil rights and civil liberties we all know will arise and for which SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE became a founding father precedent.  At a time when no Federal enforcement of law-----no oversight and accountability exists at Federal or state level-----the abuses will flare.  What choices does a citizen in a community with no public school have if the only K-12 is Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist?  This policy sold under creating CHOICE will have parents moving their children all over the place seeking the school to which they relate. 

The immediate goal of these privatization plans is to segregate according to religion community schools and by placing a particular religious school in a particular area of a city like Baltimore we have new citizens moving to those communities.  This is the immediate goal.  The very near future will have those populations moving to a community then seeing those religious schools closing and global corporate campuses being the only source of schooling.

All of this will happen very quickly as this coming decade sees the installation of US International Economic Zone structures like global corporate campuses, corporate campus worker housing, all becoming that non-profit WRAP-AROUND service about which Wall Street global pols are always POSING PROGRESSIVE.

Most people can see this progression and we must think what is more important?  Segregating because of race and class issues today or ONE WORLD GLOBAL CORPORATE RULE WITH NO RIGHTS AS CITIZENS, NO FREEDOM OR LIBERTY, AND NO RELIGIOUS TIME BECAUSE YOU ARE WORKING 15-18 HOURS A DAY 6 DAYS A WEEK.


Using Religion to Discriminate

With increasing frequency, we are seeing individuals and institutions claiming a right to discriminate – by refusing to provide services to women and LGBT people – based on religious objections. The discrimination takes many forms, including:

• Religiously affiliated schools firing women because they became pregnant while not married;
• Business owners refusing to provide insurance coverage for contraception for their employees;
• Graduate students, training to be social workers, refusing to counsel gay people;
• Pharmacies turning away women seeking to fill birth control prescriptions;
• Bridal salons, photo studios, and reception halls closing their doors to same-sex couples planning their weddings.

While the situations may differ, one thing remains the same: religion is being used as an excuse to discriminate against and harm others.
Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion aren’t new. In the 1960s, we saw institutions object to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring fairness. It is no different today.
Religious freedom in America means that we all have a right to our religious beliefs, but this does not give us the right to use our religion to discriminate against and impose those beliefs on others who do not share them.
Through litigation, advocacy and public education, the ACLU works to defend religious liberty and to ensure that no one is either discriminated against nor denied services because of someone else’s religious beliefs.

Learn More

Using Religion to Discriminate Against Women

In medical care

Across the country, we are seeing hospitals, insurance companies, pharmacies, and other health care entities discriminate against women by denying basic care – like birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion – in the name of religion. Many of these institutions receive taxpayer funding. The ACLU works to ensure that women are not denied information and the health care they need because of the religious views of their health care providers.

• Challenges to the Federal Contraceptive Coverage Rule
• Promoting Equality: An Analysis of the Federal Contraceptive Coverage Rule
• Birth control court cases (blog)
• Morr-Fitz v. Blagojevich
• ACLU of Massachusetts v. Kathleen Sebelius, et al.

In employment

We have seen a recent spate of cases in which religiously affiliated schools have fired women for getting pregnant while single or for using IVF.  These cases are suggestive of a past when women were routinely pushed out of the workplace because of pregnancy.  Such discrimination is now illegal, even if religiously motivated.

• Fired for My Family (blog)
• Religion isn't a Free Pass to Discriminate Against Employees (blog)
• Inside Out and Pregnancy Discrimination

Using Religion to Discriminate Against LGBT people

In services

In many states, businesses are barred by law from discriminating against customers based on their sexual orientation, as well as based on race, religion, or other legally protected categories. Increasingly, we see business owners claiming that they do not have to follow these laws but can instead refuse to provide services – including lodging, wedding dresses, and photography services – because the owners object to same-sex relationships. In addition, we see social service organizations that receive government funding deny services to same-sex couples. Everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs, but when you operate a business or run a publicly funded social service agency open to the public, those beliefs do not give you a right to discriminate.

• Craig and Mullins v. Masterpiece Cakeshop
• Ingersoll v. Alrene's Flowers
• Will We Sanction Discrimination?: Can 'Heterosexuals Only' Be Among the Signs of Today? (UCLA Law Review Essay)
• Elane Photography, LLC v. Vanessa Willock
• Baker and Linsley v. Wildflower Inn
• Wathen v. Beall Mansion Bed and Breakfast
• Catholic Charities v. DCFS

Recent Blogs:

• Masterpiece Cakeshop
• Marriage Licenses

In medical care

The ACLU has seen instances of students training to become mental health professionals and medical practices that have refused to treat lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. While we’re all entitled to our own religious beliefs, licensed medical providers should adhere to professional standards and not use their religion to discriminate against clients who come to them for help.

• Ward v. Wilbanks
• Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley
• Benitez v. North Coast Medical Group

______________________________________
It is very disturbing when a national corporate non-profit then says a school must partner with a religious institution in order to receive funding. This coming economic crash will see conditions of Federal, state, and local governments tied to systemic BOND MARKET FRAUD-----say they can no longer fund public schools and this will be the model for all public schools----tying these buildings to first that corporate donor and then that religious donor. It will take no time to eliminate that religious donor as global corporate campuses do not like MORALITY, ETHICS, OR RULE OF LAW------WHAT RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION PARTNERS WITH THOSE BELIEFS?



'The United Way of Greater Cleveland President Bill Kitson said if any school district expects taxpayer dollars for their program, “You must include a faith-based partner.”


'It is that government fear of theocrats that empowered Ohio Governor Kasich to force public schools to “partner with” churches to qualify for taxpayer dollars for public schools; or in Ohio’s case, corporate Christian madrassas'.


Republican Kasich Forces Public Schools To Partner with Religion Or Lose Taxpayer Funding


By Rmuse on Tue, Dec 16th, 2014 at 8:51 pm



American children, and their parents for that matter, should be thankful they live in a nation that prohibits religious indoctrination in the public school system. In many Islamic countries, the government forces religious instruction on every student using taxpayer money that is just the price those poor people pay for living in a harsh theocracy controlled by religious extremists.
Of course, the religious leaders in countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and many others assert that “faith plays an important role in shaping the lives of young people,” and their justification for forcing religion on students is because “god has a purpose for each and every one of them (students) and we’re helping them find it.” That is the case in wide swathes of Syria and Iraq where the Islamic State (ISIS) closed down “infidel schools” and forced teachers to undergo religious instruction training or lose funding, and likely their lives, unless they learn to teach religious extremism. Many Americans are likely thinking, “thank dog we live in America where that kind of religious edict is illegal and un-constitutional,” but they would be wrong in thinking America is not on pace to become a harsh religious theocracy.


Obviously, there are Christian extremists in America who believe, like the Islamic State extremists, that it is the government’s duty to force religious instruction on public schools, and this week, Ohio Governor John Kasich made that “religious extremist duty” mandatory in Ohio. Kasich issued a statement through a spokesman informing Ohio schools that if they fail to align with Christian organizations, they will lose funding. It should disabuse any American of the idea that this sad country is exceptional; unless they consider theocracy a la ISIS exceptional.
A new mentoring program funded with taxpayer dollars requires ALL Ohio school districts to become partners with a faith-based organization (church) and a corporation in order to have access to the public school money. The initiative is the brain-child of religious Republican Governor John Kasich and provides funding to mentor at-risk students, but only if the schools allow a church and corporation to control the program. According to the initiative, “failure to incorporate a faith-based non-profit (Christian church) will eliminate a school district’s eligibility for the taxpayer funding.”
When asked why Kasich is forcing public schools to spend taxpayer money for incorporating religion in schools, his spokesman said, “The governor believes faith-based organizations play an important role in the lives of young people. The Good Lord has a purpose for each and every one of them and we’re helping them to find it.” And, any Ohio district that thinks for a second that using taxpayer dollars to insert religion in public schools is wrong will not get funding. ISIS leaders would be proud of Kasich because there are no exceptions according to one of Kasich’s theocratic advisors. The United Way of Greater Cleveland President Bill Kitson said if any school district expects taxpayer dollars for their program, “You must include a faith-based partner.”
Another one of Kasich’s theocratic underlings, and senior policy analyst for the Ohio Department of Education, Buddy Harris, broke the good news to a gathering of church representatives that they are now firmly entrenched in, and will soon control, public education. He said that any school district’s application for taxpayer money must include a corporation and place of worship in its partnership. According to Harris, any “partnership” that dares exclude a faith-based group (church) will not qualify for public school tax dollars because “faith is clearly at the heart of the vision of the governor.” Translation; religion runs the program with corporations, and schools are subject to oversight of the “senior partners.”


Kasich’s theocratic initiative is part and parcel of the religious right fundamentalists’ “Onward Christian Soldier” campaign to eradicate  “deviant schools and replace them with institutions that will propagate Christian family values by issuing government edicts that all education will be handed over to the church,” and funded with taxpayer dollars. It is now the law in Ohio that joins several other religious Republican states using taxpayer dollars for public schools for Christian religious instruction in private, charter, and public schools.
Sadly, since the Vatican-5 on the Supreme Court deconstructed and demolished the Establishment, Separation, and Free Exercise clauses in the First Amendment, there is little redress for any American opposed to their child suffering religious indoctrination against their will. Despite the, soon to be abolished,  provision that public school dollars could not be used to pay churches to control curriculum and indoctrinate students, Republican governors and legislatures across the nation are violating the provision with impunity. Like the Internal Revenue Service’s abject fear of challenging evangelical clergy violating their 501 c tax-exempt status by campaigning from the pulpit, the Department of Justice, state and federal, are terrified of enforcing the law because of the unwritten mortal sin prohibiting challenging evangelical Christians.
In states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, to name but a few, Republicans are blatantly funneling public school money into religious instruction with impunity. In Louisiana, for example, the State Supreme Court ruled that religious Governor Bobby Jindal’s scheme of diverting public school funding to private religious schools is “unconstitutional and violates the Louisiana Constitution.” However, since Jindal refuses to acknowledge that the state, or federal, Constitution has supremacy over theocratic edicts, the taxpayer dollars continue flowing freely for religious instruction.
In fact, across America, taxpayers are spending over $1 billion on religious instruction in public charter schools alone with no government accountability due to the official terror of violating that despicable “unwritten mortal sin.” It is that government fear of theocrats that empowered Ohio Governor Kasich to force public schools to “partner with” churches to qualify for taxpayer dollars for public schools; or in Ohio’s case, corporate Christian madrassas.
If any American believed this nation is not rushing toward an ISIS-like theocracy, with apparent government support, they have been in a coma. Kasich’s move is the most blatant sign to date that the U.S. Constitution, or Founders’ intent, prohibiting religious control of the government or public education was a nice idea that will likely be as extinct as secular schools are in Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan.
_________________________________________

Below you see exactly how these 1% Wall Street authoritarians think-----if they do assign a major religion as their partner-----it always ties that church leader to working for the benefit of that authoritarian regime. As this article tells most movement towards a MAOIST-style militaristic authoritarianism starts with keeping religion out as people are RE-EDUCATED and societal structures changed----with later considerations of bringing back religion afterwards......the ANTI-FORMALISM of religion.
Since these are historical patterns known to our national religious leaders it would be their mission to disengage with the 1% global corporate crew.

'And so from that regard, rulers are very interested:
“Okay, if we can co-opt the power of this religious organization we’ll go ahead and do it. We’ll keep out your competitors. We’ll keep funding you. If you need funding, that’s great. Just give us ideological legitimation and/or you keep your people from organizing and rebelling against us.”

Why authoritarian regimes support religion


By Tobin Grant | January 6, 2014
 Jean-Baptiste Dodane


Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro. Source: Jean-Baptiste Dodane. Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/27998473@N02/9629973934



Depending on how you measure it, the largest Catholic church building in the world isn’t St. Peters in Rome. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest church is Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire (video below). The impressive structure was built and paid for in the 1980s by the country’s authoritarian president Félix Houphouët-Boigny.


The structure features the the largest stained glass window in the world. To placate other religions, Houphouët-Boigny also built the Grand Mosque and the Protestant Temple in his capital.
[tweetable]


Why do authoritarian regimes bother to fund and support religion?


[/tweetable] This is one of the many questions University of Washington political economist Tony Gill in an EconTalk podcast released today. The podcast is a great primer on how economists view religion and religious liberty.
During the interview, EconTalk host Russ Roberts asked Gill why authoritarian states would tolerate churches and other religious groups whose moral authority could compete against the regime’s claim to legitimacy. Gill’s response in a nutshell:

[tweetable]Authoritarian regimes fund religion because it’s cheaper to pay off religion than to squash it.[/tweetable]



Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro. Source: Jean-Baptiste Dodane. Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/27998473@N02/9629973934
Here’s a snippet from the full interview (it’s worth listening to the full hour podcast here).



Gill: …[churches and other religious movements] are able to mobilize people, to get people to act upon their beliefs. And this becomes a big threat to political rulers. So, [religion] is another source of authority; they have a set of rules and behavioral norms that they adhere to.
“And if this is used against us,” [the rulers might say] “well that could threaten our number one priority which is to get up tomorrow morning and make sure that we’re still in office.”
And so from that regard, rulers are very interested:
“Okay, if we can co-opt the power of this religious organization we’ll go ahead and do it. We’ll keep out your competitors. We’ll keep funding you. If you need funding, that’s great.  Just give us ideological legitimation and/or you keep your people from organizing and rebelling against us.”


Russ: That’s a great point. It really is–if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And joining ’em can be cheaper than beating ’em. That’s a great way to think about it.
Gill: Exactly…if there’s ever a change in leadership it would seem that the rational strategy would just be: go to the Church and renegotiate the deal, saying, “Here it is: the old rulers–we put them in prison or hung them, and we’re the new ones in charge, so we’ll keep away your competitors and keep funding you.”
The question though is: to what extent the church can offer a credible commitment in supporting that regime?


And in the case of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church was so tied to the Czars that folks like Lenin (with a very rapid change in leadership) would say, “well, I don’t know if we trust you folks.

And so it was just easier to crush them.”


What is interesting though is that Stalin…falls into this trap, too, of supporting this church-state bargain, because as WWII starts to roll around and he’s saying, “I’m worried about the Germans off there to our west, and we need to rally the Russians for nationalism.” He turned to the Russian Orthodox Church, “Listen, guys, sorry about all the killing of your clergy, but we need to support you now; we’ll pay you for your clergy,” And they basically set up a modus vivendi (a political agreement to accommodate each other).


[This worked] with the Chinese government as well. The rapid revolutionary change: anything from the ancient regime we have to get rid of rapidly and so we crush all possible forms of dissent. But over time you say, well, I guess we couldn’t really crush this religion, so let’s start to try to deal with this. And you see this in the late 1970s or early 1980s; Deng Xiaoping says, “You want to have religion, we’ll give you an official religion.”…they have some consortium of Christian churches which is officially recognized, and it’s a pretty tame church, and they let that exist. There are also these other groups that are unofficial that they tolerate so long as they don’t pose a threat to the survival of the regime.



________________________________________________

Here in Baltimore one can watch free TV and see the ads from religious END OF TIMES folks seeing the coming of NEW WORLD ORDER as the Revelations ending religion. The time for a second-coming of Christ for example. I still hear citizens saying this is conspiracy theory but these terms ONE WORLD AND NEW WORLD ORDER have been used by US political think tanks throughout the 20th century ----as below with Brookings Institute---the global neo-liberal outlet to Johns Hopkins being the global neo-conservative think tank.

Whatever one thinks all this will look like----none of it has anything to do with religion----it is anti-religion ----and today's religious leaders should not want to partner with these 1% Wall Street global corporate institutions. This coming decade will advance this International Economic Zone structure in the US under economic collapse-----with a very quick movement to what the 1% see as a one world global government. This is why WE THE PEOPLE must become engaged NOW----in reversing these goals. It does not help third world nations to have the US and Europe brought down to their developing nation status---it only enriches the 1%----

THE GOALS OF EDUCATION POLICY AND THIS CURRENT DISMANTLING OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IS THE NEED FOR PEOPLE NOT TO KNOW---NOT TO RECEIVE ACCURATE INFORMATION ---AND THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS WHEN WE ALLOW PRIVATIZED AND CORPORATIZED EDUCATION STANDARDIZATION OF INFORMATION AND THE FAR-RIGHT WEALTH AND POWER DEPEND ON EDUCATION CAPTURE.

One's views of end of world differ-----each person is capable of having their own private religious rituals no matter the far-right authoritarian political model----but this shows many in the religious world have been watching these geo-political policies with an eye to being a threat to RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS.

***********************************************************
Please glance through a long article but look more closely once you reach this caption to get the sense of what the agenda MOVING FORWARD looks like------

A Global Currency


The Phoenix
In 1988, The Economist ran an article titled, Get Ready for the Phoenix, in which they wrote, “THIRTY years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency.





'Conclusion

Ultimately, what this implies is that the future of the global political economy is one of increasing moves toward a global system of governance, or a world government, with a world central bank and global currency; and that, concurrently, these developments are likely to materialize in the face of and as a result of a decline in democracy around the world, and thus, a rise in authoritarianism. What we are witnessing is the creation of a New World Order, composed of a totalitarian global government structure'.




The Financial New World Order: Towards a Global Currency and World Government

July 10, 2011 1:13 am /The Financial New World Order: Towards a Global Currency and World Government

The Financial New World Order: Towards a Global Currency and World Government
Global Research, April 6, 2009


Introduction


Following the 2009 G20 summit, plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the US dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. Point 19 of the communiqué released by the G20 at the end of the Summit stated, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity.” SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights, are “a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund.” As the Telegraph reported, “the G20 leaders have activated the IMF’s power to create money and begin global “quantitative easing”. In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body.

Conspiracy theorists will love it.”[1]


The article continued in stating that, “There is now a world currency in waiting. In time, SDRs are likely to evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the People’s Bank of China.” Further, “The creation of a Financial Stability Board looks like the first step towards a global financial regulator,” or, in other words, a global central bank.
It is important to take a closer look at these “solutions” being proposed and implemented in the midst of the current global financial crisis. These are not new suggestions, as they have been in the plans of the global elite for a long time. However, in the midst of the current crisis, the elite have fast-tracked their agenda of forging a New World Order in finance. It is important to address the background to these proposed and imposed “solutions” and what effects they will have on the International Monetary System (IMS) and the global political economy as a whole.


A New Bretton-Woods


In October of 2008, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK, said that we “must have a new Bretton Woods – building a new international financial architecture for the years ahead.” He continued in saying that, “we must now reform the international financial system around the agreed principles of transparency, integrity, responsibility, good housekeeping and co-operation across borders.” An article in the Telegraph reported that Gordon Brown would want “to see the IMF reformed to become a ‘global central bank’ closely monitoring the international economy and financial system.”[2]
On October 17, 2008, Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he said, “This week, European leaders came together to propose the guiding principles that we believe should underpin this new Bretton Woods: transparency, sound banking, responsibility, integrity and global governance. We agreed that urgent decisions implementing these principles should be made to root out the irresponsible and often undisclosed lending at the heart of our problems. To do this, we need cross-border supervision of financial institutions; shared global standards for accounting and regulation; a more responsible approach to executive remuneration that rewards hard work, effort and enterprise but not irresponsible risk-taking; and the renewal of our international institutions to make them effective early-warning systems for the world economy.[Emphasis added]”[3]


In early October 2008, it was reported that, “as the world’s central bankers gather this week in Washington DC for an IMF-World Bank conference to discuss the crisis, the big question they face is whether it is time to establish a global economic “policeman” to ensure the crash of 2008 can never be repeated.” Further, “any organisation with the power to police the global economy would have to include representatives of every major country – a United Nations of economic regulation.” A former governor of the Bank of England suggested that, “the answer might already be staring us in the face, in the form of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS),” however, “The problem is that it has no teeth. The IMF tends to couch its warnings about economic problems in very diplomatic language, but the BIS is more independent and much better placed to deal with this if it is given the power to do so.”[4]


Emergence of Regional Currencies


On January 1, 1999, the European Union established the Euro as its regional currency. The Euro has grown in prominence over the past several years. However, it is not to be the only regional currency in the world. There are moves and calls for other regional currencies throughout the world.
In 2007, Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, ran an article titled, The End of National Currency, in which it began by discussing the volatility of international currency markets, and that very few “real” solutions have been proposed to address successive currency crises. The author poses the question, “will restoring lost sovereignty to governments put an end to financial instability?” He answers by stating that, “This is a dangerous misdiagnosis,” and that, “The right course is not to return to a mythical past of monetary sovereignty, with governments controlling local interest and exchange rates in blissful ignorance of the rest of the world. Governments must let go of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them to make and control the money used in their territory. National currencies and global markets simply do not mix; together they make a deadly brew of currency crises and geopolitical tension and create ready pretexts for damaging protectionism. In order to globalize safely, countries should abandon monetary nationalism and abolish unwanted currencies, the source of much of today’s instability.”
The author explains that, “Monetary nationalism is simply incompatible with globalization. It has always been, even if this has only become apparent since the 1970s, when all the world’s governments rendered their currencies intrinsically worthless.” The author states that, “Since economic development outside the process of globalization is no longer possible, countries should abandon monetary nationalism. Governments should replace national currencies with the dollar or the euro or, in the case of Asia, collaborate to produce a new multinational currency over a comparably large and economically diversified area.” Essentially, according to the author, the solution lies in regional currencies.[5]
In October of 2008, “European Central Bank council member Ewald Nowotny said a “tri-polar” global currency system is developing between Asia, Europe and the U.S. and that he’s skeptical the U.S. dollar’s centrality can be revived.”[6]


The Union of South American Nations


The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) was established on May 23, 2008, with the headquarters to be in Ecuador, the South American Parliament to be in Bolivia, and the Bank of the South to be in Venezuela. As the BBC reported, “The leaders of 12 South American nations have formed a regional body aimed at boosting economic and political integration in the region,” and that, “The Unasur members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.”[7]
The week following the announcement of the Union, it was reported that, “Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday that South American nations will seek a common currency as part of the region’s integration efforts following the creation of the Union of South American Nations.” He was quoted as saying, “We are proceeding so as, in the future, we have a common central bank and a common currency.”[8]


The Gulf Cooperation Council and a Regional Currency


In 2005, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a regional trade bloc among Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), announced the goal of creating a single common currency by 2010. It was reported that, “An economically united and efficient GCC is clearly a more interesting proposition for larger companies than each individual economy, especially given the impediments to trade evident within the region. This is why trade relations within the GCC have been a core focus of late.” Further, “The natural extension of this trend for increased integration is to introduce a common currency in order to further facilitate trade between the different countries.” It was announced that, “the region’s central bankers had agreed to pursue monetary union in a similar fashion to the rules used in Europe.”[9]
In June of 2008, it was reported that, “Gulf Arab central bankers agreed to create the nucleus of a joint central bank next year in a major step forward for monetary union but signaled that a new common currency would not be in circulation by an agreed 2010 target.”[10] In 2002, it was announced that the “Gulf states say they are seeking advice from the European Central Bank on their monetary union programme.” In February of 2008, Oman announced that it would not be joining the monetary union. In November of 2008, it was announced that the “Final monetary union draft says Gulf central bank will be independent from governments of member states.”[11]
In March of 2009, it was reported that, “The GCC should not rush into forming a single currency as member states need to work out the framework for a regional central bank, Saudi Arabia’s Central Bank Governor Muhammad Al Jasser.” Jasser was further quoted as saying, “It took the European Union 45 years to put together a single currency. We should not rush.” In 2008, with the global financial crisis, new problems were posed for the GCC initiative, as “Pressure mounted last year on the GCC members to drop their currency pegs as inflation accelerated above 10 per cent in five of the six countries. All of the member states except Kuwait peg their currencies to the dollar and tend to follow the US Federal Reserve when setting interest rates.”[12]


An Asian Monetary Union


In 1997, the Brookings Institution, a prominent American think tank, discussed the possibilities of an East Asian Monetary Union, stating that, “the question for the 21st century is whether analogous monetary blocs will form in East Asia (and, for that matter, in the Western Hemisphere). With the dollar, the yen, and the single European currency floating against one another, other small open economies will be tempted to link up to one of the three.” However, “the linkage will be possible only if accompanied by radical changes in institutional arrangements like those contemplated by the European Union. The spread of capital mobility and political democratization will make it prohibitively difficult to peg exchange rates unilaterally. Pegging will require international cooperation, and effective cooperation will require measures akin to monetary unification.”[13]
In 2001, Asia Times Online wrote an article discussing a speech given by economist Robert A. Mundell at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, at which he stated that, “[t]he “Asean plus three” (the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus China, Japan, and Korea) ‘should look to the European Union as a model for closer integration of monetary policy, trade and eventually, currency integration’.”[14]
On May 6, 2005, the website of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced that, “China, Japan, South Korea and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have agreed to expand their network of bilateral currency swaps into what could become a virtual Asian Monetary Fund,” and that, “[f]inance officials of the 13 nations, who met in the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) annual conference in Istanbul, appeared determined to turn their various bilateral agreements into some sort of multilateral accord, although none of the officials would directly call it an Asian Monetary Fund.”[15]
In August of 2005, the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank published a report on the prospects of an East Asian Monetary Union, stating that East Asia satisfies the criteria for joining a monetary union, however, it states that compared to the European initiative, “The implication is that achieving any monetary arrangement, including a common currency, is much more difficult in East Asia.” It further states that, “In Europe, a monetary union was achievable primarily because it was part of the larger process of political integration,” however, “There is no apparent desire for political integration in East Asia, partly because of the great differences among those countries in terms of political systems, culture, and shared history. As a result of their own particular histories, East Asian countries remain particularly jealous of their sovereignty.”
Another major problem, as presented by the San Francisco Fed, is that, “East Asian governments appear much more suspicious of strong supranational institutions,” and thus, “in East Asia, sovereignty concerns have left governments reluctant to delegate significant authority to supranational bodies, at least so far.” It explains that as opposed to the steps taken to create a monetary union in Europe, “no broad free trade agreements have been achieved among the largest countries in the region, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China.” Another problem is that, “East Asia does not appear to have an obvious candidate for an internal anchor currency for a cooperative exchange rate arrangement. Most successful new currencies have been started on the back of an existing currency, establishing confidence in its convertibility, thus linking the old with the new.”
The report concludes that, “exchange rate stabilization and monetary integration are unlikely in the near term. Nevertheless, East Asia is integrating through trade, even without an emphasis on formal trade liberalization agreements,” and that, “there is evidence of growing financial cooperation in the region, including the development of regional arrangements for providing liquidity during crises through bilateral foreign exchange swaps, regional economic surveillance discussions, and the development of regional bond markets.” Ultimately, “East Asia might also proceed along the same path [as Europe], first with loose agreements to stabilize currencies, followed later by tighter agreements, and culminating ultimately in adoption of a common anchor—and, after that, maybe an East Asia dollar.”[16]


In 2007, it was reported that, “Asia may need to establish its own monetary fund if it is to cope with future financial shocks similar to that which rocked the region 10 years ago,” and that, “Further Asian financial integration is the best antidote for Asian future financial crises.”[17]
In September of 2007, Forbes reported that, “An East Asian monetary union anchored by Japan is feasible but the region lacks the political will to do it, the Asian Development Bank said.” Pradumna Rana, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) economist, said that, “it appears feasible to establish a currency union in East Asia — particularly among Indonesia, Japan, (South) Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand,” and that, “The economic potential for monetary integration in Asia is strong, even though the political underpinnings of such an accord are not yet in place.” Further, “the real integration at the trade levels ‘will actually reinforce the economic case for monetary union in Asia, in a similar way that real-sector integration did so in Europe,” and ultimately, “the road to an Asian monetary union could proceed on a ‘multi-track, multi-speed’ basis with a seamless Asian free trade area the goal on the trade side.”[18] In April of 2008, it was reported that, “ASEAN bank deputy governors and financial deputy ministers have met in Vietnam’s central Da Nang city, discussing issues on the financial and monetary integration and cooperation in the region.”[19]


African Monetary Union


Currently, Africa has several different monetary union initiatives, as well as some existing monetary unions within the continent. One initiative is the “monetary union project of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),” which is a “regional group of 15 countries in West Africa.” Among the members are those of an already-existing monetary union in the region, the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). The ECOWAS consists of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Cape Verde, Liberia, Ghana, Gambia, and Nigeria.[20]
The African Union was founded in 2002, and is an intergovernmental organization consisting of 53 African states. In 2003, the Brookings Institution produced a paper on African economic integration. In it, the authors started by stating that, “Africa, like other regions of the world, is fixing its sights on creating a common currency. Already, there are projects for regional monetary unions, and the bidding process for an eventual African central bank is about to begin.” It states that, “A common currency was also an objective of the Organization for African Unity and the African Economic Community, the predecessors of the AU,” and further, that, “The 1991 Abuja Treaty establishing the African Economic Community outlines six stages for achieving a single monetary zone for Africa that were set to be completed by approximately 2028. In the early stages, regional cooperation and integration within Africa would be strengthened, and this could involve regional monetary unions. The final stage involves the establishment of the African Central Bank (ACB) and creation of a single African currency and an African Economic and Monetary Union.”
The paper further states that the African Central Bank (ACB) “would not be created until around 2020, [but] the bidding process for its location is likely to begin soon,” however, “there are plans for creating various regional monetary unions, which would presumably form building blocks for the single African central bank and currency.”[21]
In August of 2008, “Governors of African Central Banks convened in Kigali Serena Hotel to discuss issues concerning the creation of three African Union (AU) financial institutions,” following “the AU resolution to form the African Monetary Fund (AMF), African Central Bank (ACB) and the African Investment Bank (AIB).” The central bank governors “agreed that when established, the ACB would solely issue and manage Africa’s single currency and monetary authority of the continent’s economy.”[22]
On March 2, 2009, it was reported that, “The African Union will sign a memorandum of understanding this month with Nigeria on the establishment of a continental central bank,” and that, “The institution will be based in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs Maxwell Mkwezalamba told reporters.” Further, “As an intermediate step to the creation of the bank, the pan- African body will establish an African Monetary Institute within the next three years, he said at a meeting of African economists in the city,” and he was quoted as saying, “We have agreed to work with the Association of African Central Bank Governors to set up a joint technical committee to look into the preparation of a joint strategy.”[23]
The website for the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that, “The African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs Dr. Maxwell Mkwezalamba has expressed optimism for the adoption of a common currency for Africa,” and that the main theme discussed at the AU Commission meeting in Kenya was, “Towards the Creation of a Single African Currency: Review of the Creation of a Single African Currency: Which optimal Approach to be adopted to accelerate the creation of the unique continental currency.”[24]


A North American Monetary Union and the Amero



In January of 2008, I wrote an article documenting the moves toward the creation of a North American currency, likely under the name Amero. [See: Andrew G. Marshall, North-American Monetary Integration: Here Comes the Amero. Global Research: January 20, 2008] I will briefly outline the information presented in that article here.
In 1999, the Fraser Institute, a prominent and highly influential Canadian think tank, published a report written by Economics professor and former MP, Herbert Grubel, called, The Case for the Amero: The Economics and Politics of a North American Monetary Union. He wrote that, “The plan for a North American Monetary Union presented in this study is designed to include Canada, the United States, and Mexcio,” and a “North American Central Bank, like the European Central Bank, will have a constitution making it responsible only for the maintenance of price stability and not for full employment.”[25] He opined that, “sovereignty is not infinitely valuable. The merit of giving up some aspects of sovereignty should be determined by the gains brought by such a sacrifice,” and that, “It is important to note that in practice Canada has given up its economic sovereignty in many areas, the most important of which involve the World Trade Organization (formerly the GATT), the North American Free Trade Agreement,” as well as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.[26]
Also in 1999, the C.D. Howe Institute, another of Canada’s most prominent think tanks, produced a report titled, From Fixing to Monetary Union: Options for North American Currency Integration. In this document, it was written that, “The easiest way to broach the notion of a NAMU [North American Monetary Union] is to view it as the North American equivalent of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and, by extension, the euro.”[27] It further stated that the fact that “a NAMU would mean the end of sovereignty in Canadian monetary policy is clear. Most obviously, it would mean abandoning a made-in-Canada inflation rate for a US or NAMU inflation rate.”[28]
In May of 2007, Canada’s then Governor of the Central Bank of Canada, David Dodge, said that, “North America could one day embrace a euro-style single currency,” and that, “Some proponents have dubbed the single North American currency the ‘amero’.” Answering questions following his speech, Dodge said that, “a single currency was ‘possible’.”[29]
In November of 2007, one of Canada’s richest billionaires, Stephen Jarislowsky, also a member of the board of the C.D. Howe Institute, told a Canadian Parliamentary committee that, “Canada should replace its dollar with a North American currency, or peg it to the U.S. greenback, to avoid the exchange rate shifts the loonie has experienced,” and that, “I think we have to really seriously start thinking of the model of a continental currency just like Europe.”[30]
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, while appearing on Larry King Live in 2007, was asked a question regarding the possibility of a common currency for Latin America, to which he responded by saying, “Long term, very long term. What we propose together, President Bush and myself, it’s ALCA, which is a trade union for all of the Americas. And everything was running fluently until Hugo Chavez came. He decided to isolate himself. He decided to combat the idea and destroy the idea.” Larry King then asked, “It’s going to be like the euro dollar, you mean?” to which Fox responded, “Well, that would be long, long term. I think the processes to go, first step into is trading agreement. And then further on, a new vision, like we are trying to do with NAFTA.”[31]
In January of 2008, Herbert Grubel, the author who coined the term “amero” for the Fraser Institute report, wrote an article for the Financial Post, in which he recommends fixing the Canadian loonie to the US dollar at a fixed exchange rate, but that there are inherent problems with having the US Federal Reserve thus control Canadian interest rates. He then wrote that, “there is a solution to this lack of credibility. In Europe, it came through the creation of the euro and formal end of the ability of national central banks to set interest rates. The analogous creation of the amero is not possible without the unlikely co-operation of the United States. This leaves the credibility issue to be solved by the unilateral adoption of a currency board, which would ensure that international payments imbalances automatically lead to changes in Canada’s money supply and interest rates until the imbalances are ended, all without any actions by the Bank of Canada or influence by politicians. It would be desirable to create simultaneously the currency board and a New Canadian Dollar valued at par with the U.S. dollar. With longer-run competitiveness assured at US90¢ to the U.S. dollar.”[32]
In January of 2009, an online publication of the Wall Street Journal, called Market Watch, discussed the possibility of hyperinflation of the United States dollar, and then stated, regarding the possibility of an amero, “On its face, while difficult to imagine, it makes intuitive sense. The ability to combine Canadian natural resources, American ingenuity and cheap Mexican labor would allow North America to compete better on a global stage.” The author further states that, “If forward policy attempts to induce more debt rather than allowing savings and obligations to align, we must respect the potential for a system shock. We may need to let a two-tier currency gain traction if the dollar meaningfully debases from current levels,” and that, “If this dynamic plays out — and I’ve got no insight that it will — the global balance of powers would fragment into four primary regions: North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In such a scenario, ramifications would manifest through social unrest and geopolitical conflict.”[33]


A Global Currency


The Phoenix
In 1988, The Economist ran an article titled, Get Ready for the Phoenix, in which they wrote, “THIRTY years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let’s say, the phoenix. The phoenix will be favoured by companies and shoppers because it will be more convenient than today’s national currencies, which by then will seem a quaint cause of much disruption to economic life in the late twentieth century.”
The article stated that, “The market crash [of 1987] taught [governments] that the pretence of policy cooperation can be worse than nothing, and that until real co-operation is feasible (ie, until governments surrender some economic sovereignty) further attempts to peg currencies will flounder.” Amazingly the article states that, “Several more big exchange-rate upsets, a few more stockmarket crashes and probably a slump or two will be needed before politicians are willing to face squarely up to that choice. This points to a muddled sequence of emergency followed by patch-up followed by emergency, stretching out far beyond 2018-except for two things. As time passes, the damage caused by currency instability is gradually going to mount; and the very trends that will make it mount are making the utopia of monetary union feasible.”
Further, the article stated that, “The phoenix zone would impose tight constraints on national governments. There would be no such thing, for instance, as a national monetary policy. The world phoenix supply would be fixed by a new central bank, descended perhaps from the IMF. The world inflation rate-and hence, within narrow margins, each national inflation rate-would be in its charge. Each country could use taxes and public spending to offset temporary falls in demand, but it would have to borrow rather than print money to finance its budget deficit.” The author admits that, “This means a big loss of economic sovereignty, but the trends that make the phoenix so appealing are taking that sovereignty away in any case. Even in a world of more-or-less floating exchange rates, individual governments have seen their policy independence checked by an unfriendly outside world.”
The article concludes in stating that, “The phoenix would probably start as a cocktail of national currencies, just as the Special Drawing Right is today. In time, though, its value against national currencies would cease to matter, because people would choose it for its convenience and the stability of its purchasing power.” The last sentence states, “Pencil in the phoenix for around 2018, and welcome it when it comes.”[34]

Recommendations for a Global Currency


In 1998, the IMF Survey discussed a speech given by James Tobin, a prominent American economist, in which he argued that, “A single global currency might offer a viable alternative to the floating rate.” He further stated that, “there was still a great need” for “lenders of last resort.”[35]
In 1999, economist Judy Shelton addressed the US House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services. In her testimony, she stated that, “The continued expansion of free trade, the increased integration of financial markets and the advent of electronic commerce are all working to bring about the need for an international monetary standard—a global unit of account.” She further explained that, “Regional currency unions seem to be the next step in the evolution toward some kind of global monetary order. Europe has already adopted a single currency. Asia may organize into a regional currency bloc to offer protection against speculative assaults on the individual currencies of weaker nations. Numerous countries in Latin America are considering various monetary arrangements to insulate them from financial contagion and avoid the economic consequences of devaluation. An important question is whether this process of monetary evolution will be intelligently directed or whether it will simply be driven by events. In my opinion, political leadership can play a decisive role in helping to build a more orderly, rational monetary system than the current free-for-all approach to exchange rate relations.”
She further stated that, “As we have seen in Europe, the sequence of development is (1) you build a common market, and (2) you establish a common currency. Indeed, until you have a common currency, you don’t truly have an efficient common market.” She concludes by stating, “Ideally, every nation should stand willing to convert its currency at a fixed rate into a universal reserve asset. That would automatically create a global monetary union based on a common unit of account. The alternative path to a stable monetary order is to forge a common currency anchored to an asset of intrinsic value. While the current momentum for dollarization should be encouraged, especially for Mexico and Canada, in the end the stability of the global monetary order should not rest on any single nation.”[36]
Paul Volcker, former Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, stated in 2000, that, “If we are to have a truly global economy, a single world currency makes sense.” In a speech delivered by a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, it was stated that Paul Volcker “might be right, and we might one day have a single world currency. Maybe European integration, in the same way as any other regional integration, could be seen as a step towards the ideal situation of a fully integrated world. If and when this world will see the light of day is impossible to say. However, what I can say is that this vision seems as impossible now to most of us as a European monetary union seemed 50 years ago, when the process of European integration started.”[37]
In 2000, the IMF held an international conference and published a brief report titled, One World, One Currency: Destination or Delusion?, in which it was stated that, “As perceptions grow that the world is gradually segmenting into a few regional currency blocs, the logical extension of such a trend also emerges as a theoretical possibility: a single world currency. If so many countries see benefits from currency integration, would a world currency not maximize these benefits?”
It outlines how, “The dollar bloc, already underpinned by the strength of the U.S. economy, has been extended further by dollarization and regional free trade pacts. The euro bloc represents an economic union that is intended to become a full political union likely to expand into Central and Eastern Europe. A yen bloc may emerge from current proposals for Asian monetary cooperation. A currency union may emerge among Mercosur members in Latin America, a geographical currency zone already exists around the South African rand, and a merger of the Australian and New Zealand dollars is a perennial topic in Oceania.”
The summary states that, “The same commercial efficiencies, economies of scale, and physical imperatives that drive regional currencies together also presumably exist on the next level—the global scale.” Further, it reported that, “The smaller and more vulnerable economies of the world—those that the international community is now trying hardest to help—would have most to gain from the certainty and stability that would accompany a single world currency.”[38] Keep in mind, this document was produced by the IMF, and so its recommendations for what it says would likely “help” the smaller and more vulnerable countries of the world, should be taken with a grain – or bucket – of salt.
Economist Robert A. Mundell has long called for a global currency. On his website, he states that the creation of a global currency is “a project that would restore a needed coherence to the international monetary system, give the International Monetary Fund a function that would help it to promote stability, and be a catalyst for international harmony.” He states that, “The benefits from a world currency would be enormous. Prices all over the world would be denominated in the same unit and would be kept equal in different parts of the world to the extent that the law of one price was allowed to work itself out. Apart from tariffs and controls, trade between countries would be as easy as it is between states of the United States.”[39]


Renewed Calls for a Global Currency


On March 16, 2009, Russia suggested that, “the G20 summit in London in April should start establishing a system of managing the process of globalization and consider the possibility of creating a supra-national reserve currency or a ‘super-reserve currency’.” Russia called for “the creation of a supra-national reserve currency that will be issued by international financial institutions,” and that, “It looks expedient to reconsider the role of the IMF in that process and also to determine the possibility and need for taking measures that would allow for the SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) to become a super-reserve currency recognized by the world community.”[40]
On March 23, 2009, it was reported that China’s central bank “proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.” The goal would be for the world reserve currency that is “disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run, thus removing the inherent deficiencies caused by using credit-based national currencies.” The chief China economist for HSBC stated that, “This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money.” The Governor of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, “suggested expanding the role of special drawing rights, which were introduced by the IMF in 1969 to support the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime but became less relevant once that collapsed in the 1970s.” Currently, “the value of SDRs is based on a basket of four currencies – the US dollar, yen, euro and sterling – and they are used largely as a unit of account by the IMF and some other international organizations.”
However, “China’s proposal would expand the basket of currencies forming the basis of SDR valuation to all major economies and set up a settlement system between SDRs and other currencies so they could be used in international trade and financial transactions. Countries would entrust a portion of their SDR reserves to the IMF to manage collectively on their behalf and SDRs would gradually replace existing reserve currencies.”[41]
On March 25, Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary and former President of the New York Federal Reserve, spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations, when asked a question about his thoughts on the Chinese proposal for the global reserve currency, Geithner replied that, “I haven’t read the governor’s proposal.  He’s a remarkably — a very thoughtful, very careful, distinguished central banker.  Generally find him sensible on every issue.  But as I understand his proposal, it’s a proposal designed to increase the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights.  And we’re actually quite open to that suggestion.  But you should think of it as rather evolutionary, building on the current architectures, than — rather than — rather than moving us to global monetary union [Emphasis added].”[42]
In late March, it was reported that, “A United Nations panel of economists has proposed a new global currency reserve that would take over the US dollar-based system used for decades by international banks,” and that, “An independently administered reserve currency could operate without conflicts posed by the US dollar and keep commodity prices more stable.”[43]
A recent article in the Economic Times stated that, “The world is not yet ready for an international reserve currency, but is ready to begin the process of shifting to such a currency. Otherwise, it would remain too vulnerable to the hegemonic nation,” as in, the United States.[44] Another article in the Economic Times started by proclaiming that, “the world certainly needs an international currency.” Further, the article stated that, “With an unwillingness to accept dollars and the absence of an alternative, international payments system can go into a freeze beyond the control of monetary authorities leading the world economy into a Great Depression,” and that, “In order to avoid such a calamity, the international community should immediately revive the idea of the Substitution Account mooted in 1971, under which official holders of dollars can deposit their unwanted dollars in a special account in the IMF with the values of deposits denominated in an international currency such as the SDR of the IMF.”[45]
Amidst fears of a falling dollar as a result of the increased open discussion of a new global currency, it was reported that, “The dollar’s role as a reserve currency won’t be threatened by a nine-fold expansion in the International Monetary Fund’s unit of account, according to UBS AG, ING Groep NV and Citigroup Inc.” This was reported following the recent G20 meeting, at which, “Group of 20 leaders yesterday gave approval for the agency to raise $250 billion by issuing Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs, the artificial currency that the IMF uses to settle accounts among its member nations. It also agreed to put another $500 billion into the IMF’s war chest.”[46] In other words, the large global financial institutions came to the rhetorical rescue of the dollar, so as not to precipitate a crisis in its current standing, so that they can continue with quietly forming a new global currency.


Creating a World Central Bank


In 1998, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for the New York Times advocating a “global Fed.” Garten was former Dean of the Yale School of Management, former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, previously served on the White House Council on International Economic Policy under the Nixon administration and on the policy planning staffs of Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance of the Ford and Carter administrations, former Managing Director at Lehman Brothers, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his article written in 1998, he stated that, “over time the United States set up crucial central institutions — the Securities and Exchange Commission (1933), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1934) and, most important, the Federal Reserve (1913). In so doing, America became a managed national economy. These organizations were created to make capitalism work, to prevent destructive business cycles and to moderate the harsh, invisible hand of Adam Smith.”
He then explained that, “This is what now must occur on a global scale. The world needs an institution that has a hand on the economic rudder when the seas become stormy. It needs a global central bank.” He explains that, “Simply trying to coordinate the world’s powerful central banks — the Fed and the new European Central Bank, for instance — wouldn’t work,” and that, “Effective collaboration among finance ministries and treasuries is also unlikely to materialize. These agencies are responsible to elected legislatures, and politics in the industrial countries is more preoccupied with internal events than with international stability.”
He then postulates that, “An independent central bank with responsibility for maintaining global financial stability is the only way out. No one else can do what is needed: inject more money into the system to spur growth, reduce the sky-high debts of emerging markets, and oversee the operations of shaky financial institutions. A global central bank could provide more money to the world economy when it is rapidly losing steam.” Further, “Such a bank would play an oversight role for banks and other financial institutions everywhere, providing some uniform standards for prudent lending in places like China and Mexico. [However, t]he regulation need not be heavy-handed.” Garten continues, “There are two ways a global central bank could be financed. It could have lines of credit from all central banks, drawing on them in bad times and repaying when the markets turn up. Alternately — and admittedly more difficult to carry out — it could be financed by a very modest tariff on all trade, collected at the point of importation, or by a tax on certain global financial transactions.”
Interestingly, Garten states that, “One thing that would not be acceptable would be for the bank to be at the mercy of short-term-oriented legislatures.” In essence, it is not to be accountable to the people of the world. So, he asks the question, “To whom would a global central bank be accountable? It would have too much power to be governed only by technocrats, although it must be led by the best of them. One possibility would be to link the new bank to an enlarged Group of Seven — perhaps a ”G-15” [or in today’s context, the G20] that would include the G-7 plus rotating members like Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Poland, India, China and South Korea.” He further states that, “There would have to be very close collaboration” between the global bank and the Fed, and that, “The global bank would not operate within the United States, and it would not be able to override the decisions of our central bank. But it could supply the missing international ingredient — emergency financing for cash-starved emerging markets. It wouldn’t affect American mortgage rates, but it could help the profitability of American multinational companies by creating a healthier global environment for their businesses.”[47]
In September of 2008, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for the Financial Times in which he stated that, “Even if the US’s massive financial rescue operation succeeds, it should be followed by something even more far-reaching – the establishment of a Global Monetary Authority to oversee markets that have become borderless.” He emphasized the “need for a new Global Monetary Authority. It would set the tone for capital markets in a way that would not be viscerally opposed to a strong public oversight function with rules for intervention, and would return to capital formation the goal of economic growth and development rather than trading for its own sake.”
Further, the “GMA would be a reinsurer or discounter for certain obligations held by central banks. It would scrutinise the regulatory activities of national authorities with more teeth than the IMF has and oversee the implementation of a limited number of global regulations. It would monitor global risks and establish an effective early warning system with more clout to sound alarms than the BIS has.” Moreover, “The biggest global financial companies would have to register with the GMA and be subject to its monitoring, or be blacklisted. That includes commercial companies and banks, but also sovereign wealth funds, gigantic hedge funds and private equity firms.” He recommends that its board “include central bankers not just from the US, UK, the eurozone and Japan, but also China, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. It would be financed by mandatory contributions from every capable country and from insurance-type premiums from global financial companies – publicly listed, government owned, and privately held alike.”[48]
In October of 2008, it was reported that Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack stated that, “it may take continued international coordination to fully unlock the credit markets and resolve the financial crisis, perhaps even by forming a new global body to oversee the process.”[49]
In late October of 2008, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for Newsweek in which he stated that, “leaders should begin laying the groundwork for establishing a global central bank.” He explained that, “There was a time when the U.S. Federal Reserve played this role [as governing financial authority of the world], as the prime financial institution of the world’s most powerful economy, overseeing the one global currency. But with the growth of capital markets, the rise of currencies like the euro and the emergence of powerful players such as China, the shift of wealth to Asia and the Persian Gulf and, of course, the deep-seated problems in the American economy itself, the Fed no longer has the capability to lead single-handedly.”
He explains the criteria and operations of a world central bank, saying that, “It could be the lead regulator of big global financial institutions, such as Citigroup or Deutsche Bank, whose activities spill across borders,” as well as “act as a bankruptcy court when big global banks that operate in multiple countries need to be restructured. It could oversee not just the big commercial banks, such as Mitsubishi UFJ, but also the “alternative” financial system that has developed in recent years, consisting of hedge funds, private-equity groups and sovereign wealth funds—all of which are now substantially unregulated.” Further, it “could have influence over key exchange rates, and might lead a new monetary conference to realign the dollar and the yuan, for example, for one of its first missions would be to deal with the great financial imbalances that hang like a sword over the world economy.”
He further postulates that, “A global central bank would not eliminate the need for the Federal Reserve or other national central banks, which will still have frontline responsibility for sound regulatory policies and monetary stability in their respective countries. But it would have heavy influence over them when it comes to following policies that are compatible with global growth and financial stability. For example, it would work with key countries to better coordinate national stimulus programs when the world enters a recession, as is happening now, so that the cumulative impact of the various national efforts do not so dramatically overshoot that they plant the seeds for a crisis of global inflation. This is a big threat as government spending everywhere goes into overdrive.”[50]
In January of 2009, it was reported that, “one clear solution to avoid a repeat of the problems would be the establishment of a “global central bank” – with the IMF and World Bank being unable to prevent the financial meltdown.” Dr. William Overholt, senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, formerly with the Rand Institute, gave a speech in Dubai in which he said that, “To avoid another crisis, we need an ability to manage global liquidity. Theoretically that could be achieved through some kind of global central bank, or through the creation of a global currency, or through global acceptance of a set of rules with sanctions and a dispute settlement mechanism.”[51]
Guillermo Calvo, Professor of Economics, International and Public Affairs at Columbia University wrote an article for VOX in late March of 2009. Calvo is the former Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, and is currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and President of the International Economic Association and the former Senior Advisor in the Research Department of the IMF.
He wrote that, “Credit availability is not ensured by stricter financial regulation. In fact, it can be counterproductive unless it is accompanied by the establishment of a lender of last resort (LOLR) that radically softens the severity of financial crisis by providing timely credit lines. With that aim in mind, the 20th century saw the creation of national or regional central banks in charge of a subset of the capital market. It has now become apparent that the realm of existing central banks is very limited and the world has no institution that fulfils the necessary global role. The IMF is moving in that direction, but it is still too small and too limited to adequately do so.”
He advocates that, “the first proposal that I would like to make is that the topic of financial regulation should be discussed together with the issue of a global lender of last resort.” Further, he proposed that, “international financial institutions must be quickly endowed with considerably more firepower to help emerging economies through the deleveraging period.”[52]


A “New World Order” in Banking


In March of 2008, following the collapse of Bear Stearns, Reuters reported on a document released by research firm CreditSights, which said that, “Financial firms face a ‘new world order’,” and that, “More industry consolidation and acquisitions may follow after JPMorgan Chase & Co.” Further, “In the event of future consolidation, potential acquirers identified by CreditSights include JPMorganChase, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.”[53]
In June of 2008, before he was Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, Timothy Geithner, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, wrote an article for the Financial Times following his attendance at the 2008 Bilderberg conference, in which he wrote that, “Banks and investment banks whose health is crucial to the global financial system should operate under a unified regulatory framework,” and he said that, “the US Federal Reserve should play a “central role” in the new regulatory framework, working closely with supervisors in the US and around the world.”[54]
In November of 2008, The National, a prominent United Arab Emirate newspaper, reported on Baron David de Rothschild accompanying Prime Minister Gordon Brown on a visit to the Middle East, although not as a “part of the official party” accompanying Brown. Following an interview with the Baron, it was reported that, “Rothschild shares most people’s view that there is a new world order. In his opinion, banks will deleverage and there will be a new form of global governance.”[55]
In February of 2009, the Times Online reported that a “New world order in banking [is] necessary,” and that, “It is increasingly evident that the world needs a new banking system and that it should not bear much resemblance to the one that has failed so spectacularly.”[56] But of course, the ones that are shaping this new banking system are the champions of the previous banking system. The solutions that will follow are simply the extensions of the current system, only sped up through the necessity posed by the current crisis.


An Emerging Global Government


A recent article in the Financial Post stated that, “The danger in the present course is that if the world moves to a “super sovereign” reserve currency engineered by experts, such as the “UN Commission of Experts” led by Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, we would give up the possibility of a spontaneous money order and financial harmony for a centrally planned order and the politicization of money. Such a regime change would endanger not only the future value of money but, more importantly, our freedom and prosperity.”[57]
Further, “An uncomfortable characteristic of the new world order may well turn out to be that global income gaps will widen because the rising powers, such as China, India and Brazil, regard those below them on the ladder as potential rivals.” The author further states that, “The new world order thus won’t necessarily be any better than the old one,” and that, “What is certain, though, is that global affairs are going to be considerably different from now on.”[58]
In April of 2009, Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, said that, “If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.”[59]
David Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, and former managing director of Kissinger and Associates, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote a book titled, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making, of which he is certainly a member. When discussing the role and agenda of the global “superclass”, he states that, “In a world of global movements and threats that don’t present their passports at national borders, it is no longer possible for a nation-state acting alone to fulfill its portion of the social contract.”[60]
He writes that, “even the international organizations and alliances we have today, flawed as they are, would have seemed impossible until recently, notably the success of the European Union – a unitary democratic state the size of India. The evolution and achievements of such entities against all odds suggest not isolated instances but an overall trend in the direction of what Tennyson called “the Parliament of Man,” or ‘universal law’.” He states that he is “optimistic that progress will continue to be made,” but it will be difficult, because it “undercuts many national and local power structures and cultural concepts that have foundations deep in the bedrock of human civilization, namely the notion of sovereignty.”[61]
He further writes that, “Mechanisms of global governance are more achievable in today’s environment,” and that these mechanisms “are often creative with temporary solutions to urgent problems that cannot wait for the world to embrace a bigger and more controversial idea like real global government.”[62]
In December of 2008, the Financial Times ran an article written by Gideon Rachman, a past Bilderberg attendee, who wrote that, “for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible,” and that, “A ‘world government’ would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.”
He then asks if the European model could “go global,” and states that there are three reasons for thinking that may be the case. First, he states, “it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a ‘global war on terror’.” Secondly, he states that, “It could be done,” largely as a result of the transport and communications revolutions having “shrunk the world.” Thirdly, this is made possible through an awakening “change in the political atmosphere,” as “The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.”
He quoted an adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying, “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government,” and that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law.” However, Rachman states that any push towards a global government “will be a painful, slow process.” He then states that a key problem in this push can be explained with an example from the EU, which “has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic. [Emphasis added]”[63]
In November of 2008, the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC), the US intelligence community’s “center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking,” released a report that it produced in collaboration with numerous think tanks, consulting firms, academic institutions and hundreds of other experts, among them are the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in London.[64]
The report, titled, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, outlines the current global political and economic trends that the world may be going through by the year 2025. In terms of the financial crisis, it states that solving this “will require long-term efforts to establish a new international system.”[65] It suggests that as the “China-model” for development becomes increasingly attractive, there may be a “decline in democratization” for emerging economies, authoritarian regimes, and “weak democracies frustrated by years of economic underperformance.” Further, the dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency, as there would likely be a “move away from the dollar.”[66]
It states that the dollar will become “something of a first among equals in a basket of currencies by 2025. This could occur suddenly in the wake of a crisis, or gradually with global rebalancing.”[67] The report elaborates on the construction of a new international system, stating that, “By 2025, nation-states will no longer be the only – and often not the most important – actors on the world stage and the ‘international system’ will have morphed to accommodate the new reality. But the transformation will be incomplete and uneven.” Further, it would be “unlikely to see an overarching, comprehensive, unitary approach to global governance. Current trends suggest that global governance in 2025 will be a patchwork of overlapping, often ad hoc and fragmented efforts, with shifting coalitions of member nations, international organizations, social movements, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and companies.” It also notes that, “Most of the pressing transnational problems – including climate change, regulation of globalized financial markets, migration, failing states, crime networks, etc. – are unlikely to be effectively resolved by the actions of individual nation-states. The need for effective global governance will increase faster than existing mechanisms can respond.”[68]
The report discusses the topic of regionalism, stating that, “Greater Asian integration, if it occurs, could fill the vacuum left by a weakening multilaterally based international order but could also further undermine that order. In the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, a remarkable series of pan-Asian ventures—the most significant being ASEAN + 3—began to take root.  Although few would argue that an Asian counterpart to the EU is a likely outcome even by 2025, if 1997 is taken as a starting point, Asia arguably has evolved more rapidly over the last decade than the European integration did in its first decade(s).” It further states that, “movement over the next 15 years toward an Asian basket of currencies—if not an Asian currency unit as a third reserve—is more than a theoretical possibility.”
It elaborates that, “Asian regionalism would have global implications, possibly sparking or reinforcing a trend toward three trade and financial clusters that could become quasi-blocs (North America, Europe, and East Asia).” These blocs “would have implications for the ability to achieve future global World Trade Organization agreements and regional clusters could compete in the setting of trans-regional product standards for IT, biotech, nanotech, intellectual property rights, and other ‘new economy’ products.”[69]
Of great importance to address, and reflecting similar assumptions made by Rachman in his article advocating for a world government, is the topic of democratization, saying that, “advances are likely to slow and globalization will subject many recently democratized countries to increasing social and economic pressures that could undermine liberal institutions.” This is largely because “the better economic performance of many authoritarian governments could sow doubts among some about democracy as the best form of government.  The surveys we consulted indicated that many East Asians put greater emphasis on good management, including increasing standards of livings, than democracy.” Further, “even in many well-established democracies, surveys show growing frustration with the current workings of democratic government and questioning among elites over the ability of democratic governments to take the bold actions necessary to deal rapidly and effectively with the growing number of transnational challenges.”[70]


Conclusion


Ultimately, what this implies is that the future of the global political economy is one of increasing moves toward a global system of governance, or a world government, with a world central bank and global currency; and that, concurrently, these developments are likely to materialize in the face of and as a result of a decline in democracy around the world, and thus, a rise in authoritarianism. What we are witnessing is the creation of a New World Order, composed of a totalitarian global government structure.
In fact, the very concept of a global currency and global central bank is authoritarian in its very nature, as it removes any vestiges of oversight and accountability away from the people of the world, and toward a small, increasingly interconnected group of international elites.
As Carroll Quigley explained in his monumental book, Tragedy and Hope, “[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able  to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”[71]
Indeed, the current “solutions” being proposed to the global financial crisis benefit those that caused the crisis over those that are poised to suffer the most as a result of the crisis: the disappearing middle classes, the world’s dispossessed, poor, indebted people. The proposed solutions to this crisis represent the manifestations and actualization of the ultimate generational goals of the global elite; and thus, represent the least favourable conditions for the vast majority of the world’s people.
It is imperative that the world’s people throw their weight against these “solutions” and usher in a new era of world order, one of the People’s World Order; with the solution lying in local governance and local economies, so that the people have greater roles in determining the future and structure of their own political-economy, and thus, their own society. With this alternative of localized political economies, in conjunction with an unprecedented global population and international democratization of communication through the internet, we have the means and possibility before us to forge the most diverse manifestation of cultures and societies that humanity has ever known.
The answer lies in the individual’s internalization of human power and destination, and a rejection of the externalization of power and human destiny to a global authority of which all but a select few people have access to. To internalize human power and destiny is to realize the gift of a human mind, which has the ability to engage in thought beyond the material, such as food and shelter, and venture into the realm of the conceptual. Each individual possesses – within themselves – the ability to think critically about themselves and their own life; now is the time to utilize this ability with the aim of internalizing the concepts and questions of human power and destiny: Why are we here? Where are we going? Where should we be going? How do we get there?
The supposed answers to these questions are offered to us by a tiny global elite who fear the repercussions of what would take place if the people of the world were to begin to answer these questions themselves. I do not know the answers to these questions, but I do know that the answers lie in the human mind and spirit, that which has overcome and will continue to overcome the greatest of challenges to humanity, and will, without doubt, triumph over the New World Order.
___________________________________________

Citizens supporting public funding of religious schools often have no idea what long-term issues surround these policy decisions and THEY NEED TO EDUCATE as to why doing this expedites the breakdown of all education freedoms including religious. OUR RELIGIOUS LEADERS KNOW THIS! Let's keep our public schools strong and our religious freedoms as well. There will be no winners in this race to global corporate rule least of all religious beliefs


Oh, Maryland!: Old Line State Considers Direct Funding Of Catholic Schools
Apr 12, 2010 by Sandhya Bathija in Wall of Separation
It’s clear the Maryland legislature, if it passes this bill, would be unconstitutionally favoring one particular religious group.Today, the Maryland legislature may vote on a bill that would provide direct funding to Catholic schools.
SB 385, which formerly proposed tax credits for tuition expenditures at religious and other private schools, was altered Saturday night by the House Ways and Means subcommittee to provide $10 million in direct grants to private schools.
The measure, originally called the Building Opportunities for All Students and Teachers (BOAST) in Maryland Tax Credit, has since been renamed the Grant Program for Non-Public Schools At-Risk of Closing. The new version requires that in order for a private school to be eligible, it must have been in the same location for 25 years, have experienced a decline in enrollment of at least 10 percent over the past five years and must charge a relatively low tuition.
In other words – the only private schools that will receive funding through this bill are Catholic schools. The language is so specific that it even excludes funding to Jewish schools in the state.
For years, Maryland has introduced tax-credit bills to support parochial schools, but this year, the legislature has given the proposal extra attention because the Archdiocese of Baltimore recently announced it may have to close 13 schools due to declining enrollment.
It’s bad enough that the Maryland General Assembly has considered private school tax credits in the past, but this is taking it much too far.
The government has no business directly funneling tax money to religious schools. Not to mention that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the government to make direct payments to sectarian institutions.

It’s clear the Maryland legislature, if it passes this bill, would be unconstitutionally favoring one particular religious group. That’s unacceptable.
Americans United is asking for your help to put a stop to this government bailout for Catholic schools. This session of the Maryland legislature ends tonight at midnight so we are asking those who live in Maryland to voice opposition to this bill by contacting your delegate and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley as soon as possible.

I speak often of national policy think tanks from Brookings and Aspen Institutes as the far-right neo-liberal think tanks to CATO and Heritage Foundations as the right-wing think tanks and I am clear there are almost no REAL social Democratic think tanks as all universities have been corporatized and that is from where much public policy is generated. I am that university academic who would still be working producing left-leaning public policy. Below you see Maryland's major public policy organization and it calls itself BIPARTISAN. It only presents far-right neo-liberalism and Bush neo-conservatism -----both the same Wall Street global corporate policy -----both right of center----

Look at this organization's mission-----it has all the trappings of free enterprise----limited government----civil society.....very right-leaning policy stances. I think most citizens in the nation know that Maryland has through modern history been the most corrupt, fraudulent, economically captured state operating under the same colonialism having a small percentage of people with power and almost no voice for anyone else. I speak of Baltimore having no local community economy------of constant misappropriation to a pre-approved group of businesses leading to PAY-TO-PLAY-----none of which is free enterprise. Maryland does in deed have limited government. It has dismantled all oversight and accountability, all avenues to public justice, and operates as a third world patronage society where the 1% pay no taxes, take all tax revenue as subsidy to maximize their wealth, creating a repressive society of fear tied to citizens having jobs, housing, access to schools, excessive police overreach none of which has anything to do with CIVIL SOCIETY.
This is a prime example of 5% to 1% having some money and stability while the 95% remain unstable. Of course these 5% are about to be dumped in Maryland for the global 2%----but this Maryland Public Policy will never discuss REAL POLICY because it works for that 1%.
'The Institute’s mission is to formulate and promote public policies at all levels of government based on principles of free enterprise, limited government, and civil society'.
This week will be education policy and again we need to look at the POSING in both parties. The Democratic base of labor and justice are being sold in privatizing K-12 for small businesses and protecting union organizing rights. The Republican base is being sold on charters and school choice over class and race issues and the idea that these charters will be COMMUNITY CHARTERS giving parents a voice
AND BOTH ARE NOT TRUE. WE DO NOT WANT TO KEEP ALLOWING THESE CAPTURED POLICY INSTITUTIONS SELL PROPAGANDA.
I know many voters are aware of the goals of these education policies and are pushing back but we need to press policy sources to stop cooking the policy books. National media connects to these policy institutions and will report as this says----when black, brown, and white citizens are mostly mad as heck at education policy in Maryland. This outlet will as well create data that says we are all happy and the policies are working.


“Maryland has finally sided with families who dream of a better life for their children,” said Christopher B. Summers, president of the Institute.

Maryland Joins Ranks of School Choice States
Economic & Fiscal Policy, Education, Welfare, Charter Schools
PRESS RELEASES
APRIL 7, 2016


ROCKVILLE, MD  (April 7, 2016) — The Maryland Public Policy Institute today congratulated Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and members of the General Assembly for enacting Maryland’s first-ever school choice program on a bipartisan vote.  The vote marks the culmination of more than a decade of work by families, policymakers and advocates to give parents a greater voice in the education system.   
The Maryland House and Senate recently passed the Fiscal Year 2017 budget, which includes $5 million for the Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today program, known as BOOST, to fund approved private-school scholarships for low-income students trapped in failing schools.
“Maryland has finally sided with families who dream of a better life for their children,” said Christopher B. Summers, president of the Institute.  “Our state is home to many excellent public schools, but too many children from low-income backgrounds have been robbed of their one shot at a great education by being forced to attend failing schools.  This legislation is a win for everybody – especially Maryland families.  We commend Governor Hogan and the Maryland General Assembly for their leadership.”  
The Institute has published extensive research highlighting the benefits of school choice programs.  A full list of research can be found at mdpolicy.org.


About the Maryland Public Policy Institute: Founded in 2001, the Maryland Public Policy Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research and education organization that focuses on state policy issues. The Institute’s mission is to formulate and promote public policies at all levels of government based on principles of free enterprise, limited government, and civil society.  Learn more at mdpolicy.org.

Maryland Public Policy Institute Projects: The Maryland Journal

_____________________________________________

Maryland's education policy has always been hostile to public education in favor of private schools and is now simply taking the step to end the status of even having public school buildings. While Maryland Public Policy Institute tells us these education programs bring to families the education possibilities the dream of having----it can be seen in this news report to simply be moving ALL STATE FUNDING FOR PUBLIC K-12 TO PRIVATE SCHOOLS. Remember, the charter schools in Baltimore are all slated to become private corporate schools and Maryland is slowly directing all higher-education to vocational tracking lower-tiered certificate programs so there is NOTHING HAPPENING IN MARYLAND ABOUT WHICH PARENTS AND STUDENTS ARE HAPPY.
This is the sad part-----this video shows the bulk of these private vouchers---scholarships for the poor will go to religious schools and we know religious schools will not be corporate campus K-12 schools----they will be defunded. As this video shows----a religious school representative from Catholic and Jewish schools hopes this funding continues and they are indeed the strongest push in all this privatization of K-12----KNOWING THE GOALS ARE CORPORATE VOCATIONAL TRACKING OF OUR 90% OF AMERICAN CITIZENS. This is so hard to understand as we watch our religious institutions partner with the 1% to end public education for all and MOVE FORWARD back to the DARK AGES in how people access education.
Johns Hopkins and Baltimore have in modern history captured all best and brightest in Baltimore's underserved communities and given them pathways to better education-----these private vouchers to SCHOOL CHOICE are more selective than ever. A citizen like myself -----social Democrat politically active holding power accountable would NEVER get a private higher-education scholarship and would end trapped in a very bad lower-tier of schooling even as I am by any estimate more academically successful than any Ivy League graduate. This selective process has Maryland and especially Baltimore completely captured to CREATING LEADERS TIED TO GLOBAL WALL STREET AND GLOBAL CORPORATE WEALTH AND POWER.

'The Maryland State Education Association sent a statement to 11 News about the BOOST Program, calling it "a thinly veiled plan to divert taxpayer dollars from public schools in order to subsidize private schools'.

The far-right neo-liberals and neo-cons will always use the poor as beneficiaries to what will trap people into education cycles leading to poverty wages. What does the bell-curve show for average learners across all population groups? Black, brown, and white citizens have the same abilities to achieve through education-----most of us are average-----some above and below average.   The persistent march to privatizing all that is public has our religious institutions now replacing every public agency having to do with social benefit as the citizens' voices in public policy disappears ---this was the societal construct of the DARK AGES. Religious leaders paired with the extreme rich and 99% of people peasants and impoverished. Now they are becoming that health and education sector as our public health and public education disappears. They know the goal will have global corporations and Wall Street in complete control of doling out patronage----WE NEED THAT 5% TO THE 1% OF EACH RELIGION TO GET RID OF THESE LEADERS TIED TO WALL STREET.


As this says----the data ALREADY shows this is failed policy but here goes MARYLAND following failed policy this time education and it DOES NOT BENEFIT IN THE LONG-RUN RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS .

'As has been shown in other states -- including brand new research in Indiana and Louisiana -- low-income students who receive vouchers to attend private schools perform worse than their peers in public schools'

Getting in line to sell out children simply to advance a brand-----



BOOST Program offers scholarships to nonpublic schools

UPDATED 5:41 PM EDT Jun 02, 2016
PIKESVILLE, Md. --Maryland is set to foot at least part of the bill for low-income students to enroll in nonpublic schools.

The state has set aside $5 million in scholarship money through the Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today (BOOST) Program.
But there's a catch: Those who may qualify for the program have a little more than a month to apply for the free money.


The Talmudical Academy of Baltimore is one of more than 200 nonpublic and private Maryland schools taking part in the BOOST Program.


"It's important as a nonpublic school to be able to offer all of the students everything they can get in the public school arena," said Rabbi Yaacov Cohen, executive director of the Talmudical Academy of Baltimore.
The state funding will pay for scholarships. The money will be limited to students who are currently enrolled at public schools who plan to apply to nonpublic schools in the fall and those who may already be on the rolls.
The $5 million will be divided among students who meet strict household and income guidelines. With applications in hand, a state scholarship advisory board will have the last word on who qualifies.

"We've been hoping and asking the state to pitch in a little bit," said Rabbi Ariel Sadwin, with the Council for American Private Education (CAPE).
CAPE said just getting the state to put up scholarship money is a major first step toward progress.
Sadwin said it's about "a parent having the option to send their child to the school where they think their child can thrive the most, whether it's a faith-based school, an independent school, nonreligious."
Baltimore's Institute of Notre Dame has been tracking the progress of the BOOST Program and is encouraging parents to apply ahead of the July 11 deadline.
But there are concerns at the Institute of Notre Dame and across the state about whether the state scholarship money will be on hand next year.
"If we have the $5 million pot empty by next year, then that gives reason for senators and members of the Assembly to come back and say it was money worth and well spent," said David Ring, president of the Institute of Notre Dame.
Maryland students who will be in kindergarten through 12th grade can apply for the scholarship.

The Maryland State Education Association sent a statement to 11 News about the BOOST Program, calling it "a thinly veiled plan to divert taxpayer dollars from public schools in order to subsidize private schools. As has been shown in other states -- including brand new research in Indiana and Louisiana -- low-income students who receive vouchers to attend private schools perform worse than their peers in public schools. Teachers and education professionals strongly oppose BOOST for these reasons and urge legislators to discontinue the program as soon as possible."

___________________________________________

Here are the pro-privatization of K-12 Republicans now saying these privatization policies have failed when they have not. If the goal of global corporate neo-liberal education was to completely dismantle the public school structure creating all kinds of deregulated tiering of schools to allow corporations to simply move children as they now want----OBAMA AND CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS WITH REPUBLICANS SUCCEEDED -----the entire K-12 education is a mess. Now they say we really need to introduce MARKET-BASED CORPORATE EDUCATION.

Since Wall Street could care less about low-income students or their success and indeed plan to simply send them off as child labor as apprentices in 6th or 8th grade---AS ALL CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA POLS KNEW AS THEY PUSHED RACE TO THE TOP----they are ready to simply stop pretending they are doing all this to help the poor.

'First, it creates a serious upper bound for the reach of school-choice programs and, ultimately, for their ability to affect the American school system'.

Since Republicans as well as Democrats are losing jobs and falling out of the middle-class---it will be those same Republican voters tied to race and class wanting these school choice policies who will fall into the worst of pre-K vocational tracking with no parent or student input----

JUST DO WHAT YOU ARE TOLD....NO LIBERTY OR FREEDOM IN SCHOOL CHOICE CONTROLLED BY CORPORATIONS.

Why School Choice Is Failing


  Rally for school choice at the Ohio Statehouse in 2011.

by Michael Q. McShane August 7, 2013 4:00 AM


It takes more than vouchers to create a successful, productive market in education. Milwaukee, Wis., is home to the nation’s oldest and largest school-voucher program, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. After starting with just over 300 students in 1990, the program enrolled almost 25,000 students last school year. With open-enrollment programs, magnet schools, and a small number of charter schools, Milwaukee is one of the most “choice-rich” environments in America. What has been the result? On the 2011 NAEP, a test given to a nationally representative sample in every state and to a select group of large districts, Milwaukee eighth-graders scored a 254 in math and 238 in reading. To put those numbers in some context, on those same tests the averages in Chicago were 270 and 253, respectively, and the large-city averages for the whole test were 274 and 255. On the NAEP, 10 points equates approximately to one year of knowledge, meaning that even compared with their peers only in other big cities, Milwaukee students are two grades below average in math and almost two grades below in reading. For those of us who believe in school choice, these are some disappointing numbers. Does this mean that school choice is the wrong policy or that the market forces that have increased quality and lowered prices in every other sector of human society somehow don’t apply to education? I don’t think so.

Rather, “school choice” has done less to create a market than many of its proponents believe. School-choice policy — frankly, education reform writ large — is fundamentally about creating high-quality seats for students in schools. School choice has only three levers to pull to make that happen. It can: Fill excess capacity. If a great school has a fourth-grade classroom with 19 students but 25 desks, or has mothballed an old wing that it can reopen, school-choice programs can get kids in there. Encourage high-quality schools to scale up. If Our Lady of Perpetual Help is thriving, school-choice programs can encourage the school to open Our Lady of Perpetual Help East, West, North, and South. Create new high-quality schools. The problem? Current school-choice programs, especially those providing private-school vouchers, are great at No. 1; they’re lousy at No. 2 and No. 3. For example, 86 percent of schools participating in Louisiana’s state scholarship program are more than ten years old and so were in existence before the voucher program. While almost 40 percent of participating Milwaukee schools have been created after Wisconsin’s program began, annual publication of school testing averages shows that the high performers are almost exclusively the long-existing schools. In both places, the high-quality seats that school choice creates or fills are not coming from market forces driving the creation of better options; rather, they are coming from vouchers that provide funding for students to leave existing low-performing schools for existing higher-performing ones. This leads to two central problems. First, it creates a serious upper bound for the reach of school-choice programs and, ultimately, for their ability to affect the American school system. At their peak in 1959, private schools enrolled only about 12 percent of U.S. school children, around 5.7 million in total. Even if we were somehow able to reopen all of those schools (private schools now enroll around 5.2 million children, or 9 percent of all students, and are concentrated much more in the suburbs than their 1959 counterparts) that still would not be enough to educate the millions of inner city students trapped in failing schools. New schools need to be created. Second, without new creation, there can be no “creative destruction.” Injecting markets into education simply creates, as Hayek would put it, a “fair playing field” for schools to compete. In functioning markets, new providers are constantly popping up to replace enterprises that are not meeting the needs of consumers.

THERE'S THE GOAL-----GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERAL PROFIT-DRIVEN K-12.


Through that winnowing process we move from hulking black-and-white televisions that cost $269 in 1958 dollars — over $1,700 in 2012 — to flat-screen LCD HDTVs that cost $249 in 2012. We don’t see that with private-school-choice programs. Private schools are closing across the country, but they are not being replaced by better ones. That doesn’t help anyone. Private-school choice will drive positive change only when it creates high-quality private schools within urban communities. New schools and school models need to be incubated, funding needs to follow students in a way that allows for non-traditional providers to play a role, new pathways into classrooms for private-school teachers and leaders need to be created, and high-quality school models need to be encouraged and supported while they scale up. In short, policymakers, private philanthropy, and school leaders need to get serious about what’s necessary to make the market work. — Michael Q. McShane is a research fellow in education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

______________________________________________

Here we have an article written in what was the Bush era when the policy of school choice was being sold to parents wanting segregation by class and race to break down the equal opportunity and access of Federal public education laws. Indeed, during the Bush era schools were allowed to become segregated on all population issues but that was never the goal. BUSH/OBAMA education policy is one in the same. The policies of expanded immigration from all around the world was going to end in forcing schools to install multi-culturalism---because Wall Street does not see race---it sees test scores and vocational tracking in its global corporate schools. This is why these several years have seen US cities deemed International Economic Zones filling with immigrants now seeing all families attending school choice and charters aimed at segregating.
Now, those families seeing school choice about segregating are pulling their children out of US city schools and going more and more to home-schooling. KNOW WHAT? HOME-SCHOOLING WILL NOT BE ALLOWED SOON as they always intended this global K-12 structure to be required for all children all tied to test scores and vocational tracking by ability. So, soon the very political group pushing all these privatization policies for our K-12----the families wanting segregation by race and class----those religious schools wanting public funding -----will all disappear into what is a COMMON CORE testing and evaluation with teachers replaced by education technicians who simply monitor and facilitate online global education lessons. Remember, far-right 1% Libertarian Marxism does not see religion in our ONE WORLD -----
WE NEED THOSE VOTERS PUSHING TO DISMANTLE A PERFECTLY GOOD PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM TO PLEASE STOP THIS.
Incoming immigrants needing ESL are slow to see funding for those classes as all resources promised so we are seeing a pooling of students pushed to lower tiers based on their abilities to learn English as has been the struggle for Latino students. NGOs are providing these global ESL classes but with limited funding again selection as to who receives what should be equally dispersed ESL funding to all public schools for programs in each school are now a privatized network with no one assuring opportunity. Remember, if pre-K testing shows a child likely to be tracked into 6th grade apprenticeships then the focus becomes only getting reading and math skills enough for a global factory job no matter the race.
EVERYONE IN, NO ONE OUT OF THE GLOBAL CORPORATE LABOR POOL AND THIS INCLUDES GLOBAL CORPORATE SCHOOLS AND THEIR VOCATIONAL TRACKING STRUCTURES.

Baltimore is the perfect microcosm for this as new citizens are being recruited from around the nation as immigrants come through what is the GATEWAY of Baltimore as in International Economic Zone. That top student group of advanced placement/exceptional getting all the funding and resources now including students from all over the world are leaving out the very US citizens having wanted school choice and charters to advance their own children.

All of the posing from the right-wing on school choice and segregation by race and class----all the posing from neo-liberals about better education for poor and immigrants again----NEVER THE GOAL-----BYE BYE AMERICAN STANDARDS OF PUBLIC DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION FOR ALL WITH #1 IN WORLD EDUCATION ACHIEVEMENT say the far-right 1% Libertarian Marxists

MPs warn of growing racial divide in schools


Polly Curtis
Friday 14 May 2004 08.09 EDT Last modified on Friday 6 May 2016 09.46 EDT


The government needs to act fast to prevent its policy of giving parents choice over the school their child attends leading to racially segregated schools, MPs warned today.
In an inquiry prompted by the race riots in Oldham in 2001, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister select committee found that "ignorance and fear of other cultures" was pushing parents to send their children to schools where they would mingle almost exclusively with pupils from the same racial background.
Headteachers in Oldham described the phenomenon as "white flight", as white families moved out of the area because they did not want their children to go to schools with large Bangladeshi populations.
In the committee's report, Social cohesion, MPs said: "Parental choice can unfortunately increase segregation. The quality of school provision is an important, but not sole determinant of choice. Some choices are motivated by ignorance and fear of other cultures, and LEAs [local education authorities] and schools have to be prepared to adopt new techniques to ensure that choices are better informed and not based on misconceptions about whether than particular school is 'for them'.

"To achieve greater social cohesion, improving the quality of schools becomes even more important so that all schools are equally attractive."
Oldham headteachers told the committee that schools in the area were becoming less multi-cultural.
Bernard Phillips, the headteacher of Breeze Hill school, said: "We serve a Bangladeshi heritage population. It is very close to a white population as well. Mine is 100%, apart from one child, Bangladeshi heritage. When I went there 10 years ago it was 60% Bangladeshi, 40% white community, but over the 10 years there has been a "white flight", the term the Americans use: we have had white families who have moved away."
The report recommended that schools used the curriculum to promote greater understanding and tolerance of other cultures to help ease racial tensions.
And it asked that careful consideration be given to the racial implications of where and when new schools are opened. A large-scale school rebuilding programme is now underway in the area.
MPs have also called on the Department for Education and Skills to commission a survey to disprove the perception that "mono-cultural" schools performed better that multi-cultural ones.
They also suggested that faith schools should not be allowed unless actively promoting multi-culturalism.
However, a DfES spokeswoman defended faith schools, saying they can make an "important contribution to community cohesion by promoting inclusion and developing partnerships with schools of other faiths, and with non-faith schools".
She added: "We want to see faith schools working with other local schools to bring children of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds together, and to promote understanding between different sections of our society. The government is not campaigning for more faith schools. Any new faith schools must have the agreement of parents and the local community."

Comment from a friend:

john kerry said errr proclaimed llast month -there will be no national borders, get used to it.

I have meetings all day so Monday will be short---we will talk education policy tomorrow.  I wanted to continue with the UK and US comparisons as to where both are heading and the quote from John Kerry says it all----there will be no national sovereignty in a ONE WORLD of simply International Economic Zones operating in the US and UK as they do in Asia.  Kerry's claim to fame is marrying a CATSUP QUEEN, doctoring military service records to appear a hero, and now wants to tell us to GET USED TO LOSING ALL RIGHTS AS CITIZENS OF A NATION CALLED THE UNITED STATES.

The last time European and American citizens had to deal with a criminal class as political leadership we had he revolutions of 1700s and the citizens called these politicians and rich whose only talent is LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING-----

THE SHIP OF FOOLS

Here we have a right-wing article about what London has looked like these few decades as open borders started as it did in US with CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.  The UK has allowed open borders to soar these several years during the worst of recession from economic collapse and unemployment creating what is a THIRD WORLD slum of immigrants living the lives of developing nation poverty.  Meanwhile, London has courted the world's 1% and then those 1% courted the world's 2% to centralize extreme wealth vs extreme poverty ----the exact pathway now being taken by the US Congress and CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.  So, it is to no benefit of immigrant families to be brought to these conditions and of course the UK citizens being left unemployed is high numbers are being forced to emigrate to Canada or Australia to find work.  So, London is simply that CITY STATE of wealth surrounded by International Economic Zone enslavement as exists in Asian nations like China.  The people voting for BREXIT----the exit of UK from the EU are those rich because they are wanting to be that International Economic Zone operating as Singapore and China.  Remember, England is the size of Alabama so when you have a NYC-style extreme wealth in Birmingham for example---the entire region is taken and there are no longer states or counties----just real estate and human capital tied to these massive International Economic Zone global corporate campuses and global factories.  More important---there are no citizens----just floods of immigrants from around the world all working to enrich the 1% ever more.

THIS IS WHERE LONDON AND THE UK ARE TODAY AND THEY ARE MOVING FROM PRETENDING TO BE CONSERVATIVE UNDER CAMERON----TO PRETENDING TO BE MARXIST UNDER JOHNSON.

In the US voters were sold on GETTING RID OF SOCIALISM----all that social democracy of safety nets and public sector giving citizens voice in public policy and a quality of life as CONSERVATIVE values-----when the goal of Republicans was never LIBERTY AND FREEDOM from taxes or subsidizing the poor----it was always about ending LIBERTY AND FREEDOM FOR ALL.

Migrant Slums Spring Up Around London

ROMAIN LAFABREGUE/AFP/Gettyby Virginia Hale6 Jun 2016772
SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

Filthy migrant shanty towns have sprung up around the outside of London. Their residents, living rent free so they can drastically undercut other workers in the UK, fear Britain voting to leave the European Union (EU).Running along one of London’s busiest roads, makeshift campsites have appeared where mostly Albanians, Romanians and Bulgarians sleep in tents or on mattresses sheltered by flyovers. Some sleep in cars that have been raised off their wheels so as to avoid paying road tax.  At the larger, more established, campsites the huts even have doors and windows.
The Sun reports that raw sewage runs through many of the camps, which are usually strewn with rubbish, beer cans, filthy clothes and bedding.
The men are picked up in trucks and vans to work for just £40 a day, “driving down wages for local plumbers and painters”. Some also gather at a Wickes in Barking, waiting for work.


A migrant from Romania told The Sun that many of the campers have “worked for two years all over Europe and it is best here in England.”
“We can earn at least three times more here than at home and much more than in Spain or Italy.
“We paint, plumb, [do] roofing, do building work.
“Some have been here six years.”
Migrants said that the camps are often dangerous due to “a lot of people getting drunk”, and lament how often people return to their spaces to find their things missing, having been stolen by other migrants.
Revealing they send almost all of the money they make back home, one migrant confessed: “I want to bring my family over one day, we all do.
“But we can’t bring our wives here to live in the camp because we are afraid the others will rape them.”


One migrant, Laurentiu, told The Sun he wants to bring his children over to the UK, but that he fears a vote for Britain to leave the EU would bring an end to this dream: “I have three kids at home and I would like to bring them here but I am worried about the vote.
“If Britain votes to leave we could all be kicked out — we would probably go back to Spain or Italy.”
Residents found the shanty towns of migrants “a complete nuisance”.  A local worker said the men are “knocking wages down”.
“I feel for them but we can’t keep taking them in.”
Left-wing supporters of the campaign to remain in the European Union regularly claim that the EU “protects workers’ rights”, many almost implying it is the one body standing between the Conservative Party sending British people to the Victorian workhouse.
But it’s unclear how they think British workers can maintain a lifestyle, in which they can afford to live in reasonable lodgings and bring up children, when foreign competitors are sleeping rough in camps with almost no day-to-day living expenses.

_________________________________________

This article is great for showing what the immigrant status is in this tiny nation of England.  Unfortunately I cannot copy the graphs of nationality of immigrants that is key so visit this article to see what the demographics show.  We see UK is filled with European Union people who have citizenship rights in UK because UK is in the EU.  When the UK leaves the EU----all those Eastern European immigrants often living in these slums will no longer have those rights.  They will be in UK just as the Asian, African, South Pacific immigrants are with no rights at all.  So, UK wants to leave the EU to create this International Economic Zone condition for what are now a super-majority of UK citizens.

This is to what Obama and our Congressional pols have as a goal with all the immigration policy these several years POSING PROGRESSIVE while giving Latinos more rights as in driver's license etc----with only the goal of bringing more and more and more immigrants from all over the world to US cities deemed International Economic Zones LIKE BALTIMORE----so these same demographics we see in the UK will exist in the US in just two decades.  This coming economic collapse with long-term recession/depression will send most US citizens into unemployment while building of global corporate campuses and global factories in US cities like Baltimore----will see tons of immigrants brought to do this work next decade.

Meanwhile, all those POSING FEEL THE BERN Clinton/Obama neo-liberals are going to advance this 1% Libertarian Marxism -----pretending to be feeling the pain of American citizens being thrown into poverty and pretending to support old-fashion American social democracy when their goal will be this MAO Chinese Marxism-----


The UK's foreign-born population: see where people live and where they're fromFind out how many of the UK's population were born outside the UK - and where they are
• Get the data

UK's foreign-born population. Click image for graphic
Latest figures from the ONS show there are now 521,000 Polish-born residents of the UK - up from 75,000 in 2003.
It makes the Poles the biggest UK community by foreign nationality - and the second (after India) by country of birth. The figures came out as part of the comprehensive annual population survey, which (at least until the census results emerge next year) give us a real insight in the demographics of Britain.
Last week we mapped the different ethnic populations of England and Wales, these figures are a bit different. Obviously, all they comprise of are details of the country of birth and the passport each person holds. So, while Indian-born residents may be more likely to gain British nationality, people from Poland people wouldn't need to, as members of the European Union.
The figures also give a fascinating breakdown of the top foreign-born population for each region of the UK. They include details such as:
• The Phillipines is responsible for the fifth biggest foreign-born population in Wales - 6,000 people
• Germany is the fifth biggest foreign-born population in the UK, with 290,000 people
• The biggest percentage of foreign-born people in the UK is in Brent - 54.2%
• Polish-born residents are either the biggest or second biggest foreign-born populations in eight regions of the UK, and biggest in Scotland and Wales
• Since Poland and seven other central and Eastern European countries (collectively known as the A8) joined the EU in May 2004 around 69 per cent of all A8 citizens migrating to the UK have been Polish citizens
• London has 123,000 Polish-born residents, 24 per cent of the UK total
We've gone for country of birth rather than nationality on these pages because it gives a real sense of the patchwork nature of Britian today - but you could equally well do the same thing with country of nationality - and the full data is below.
There is huge variation across England and Wales - the graphic below shows the percentage of foreign-born population by different parts of the UK.
Get the fullscreen version

We'd like to hear from you on this. Are you one of the 521,000 Poles living in the UK now, or do you come from the Philippines and live in Wales? How closely do the stats reflect your experience?
The full data is below. What can you do with it?

________________________________________________

Here you see the UK citizens becoming that global labor pool-----having become ex-pats in large numbers these few decades trying to find a better life than that created by Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal International Economic Zone policies in UK.  The same now happened in Ireland these several years as Ireland was imploded with the subprime mortgage and banking frauds and economic crash of 2008.  Ireland now has this same global immigrant pool of labor coming in and replacing Irish citizens.

So, this is the goal of US Congressional Wall Street global pols and CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and of course a HILLARY OR TRUMP will keep the same policies MOVING FORWARD. Americans will be told as John Kerry said above----JUST GET OVER IT.


Why So Many People Are Leaving The UK?Published: 27 Feb at 3 PM
Want to get involved? Become a Featured Expat and take our interview.
Become a Local Expert and contribute articles.
Get in touch today!
Filed: Emigrating,England
The last decade has seen a significant rise in British people opting to move abroad for a better lifestyle. In 2006 an estimated 207,000 British Nationals emigrated, this is now at an all time high, with numbers of this scale not seen since before the 1st World War. The most popular destinations for British ex-pats are France, Spain, Australia and New Zealand, with over 50% choosing these countries to emigrate to.

More Brits live abroad than other nation, so why is this? What is it about Britain that is making so many of us leave to set up life in another country? In the last twenty years more opportunity's have become available which now makes it easier for many Brits to move abroad, who before could only dream of another life in the sun. There are many factors influencing ex-pats decisions to move abroad and start a new life.

One of the overwhelming factors which encourage Brits to move abroad is the dismal weather which blights the UK. Although the UK has beautiful countryside and stunning beaches, the weather permits how often we get to enjoy these delights. Even in summer months there is no guarantee that we can plan a picnic or a day out to the beach, as more often than not the weather will destroy our best laid plans. Countries such as Greece, Spain, France and Italy have beautiful warm summer days and balmy nights where they can enjoy visits to the beach, evening strolls along the harbour and dining al-fresco at home or outdoor restaurants. When we see British people drinking coffee, shivering on outdoor patio's, it is not difficult to see why a move to a warmer country is so appealing for many.

Often the cost of living in many foreign countries is a contributing factor for many Brits when considering a move abroad. Many skilled professionals find that they can earn more than they do in the UK with better working conditions, such as less working hours, less tax and private health care schemes. Many ex-pats have noticed an improvement in their leisure time with a better balance between their working life and social life. The majority of Mediterranean countries such as Spain and Italy have relaxed working hours and often enjoy siesta's during the hotter time of the day. Eating out and day to day living is often also less expansive in many of these countries than in Britain.

The combination of less working hours and more leisure time has dramatically improved the quality of life for many ex-pats living abroad. According to a report by the Daily Mail, nine out of ten Brits living abroad said their quality of life has improved since leaving the UK. Often the way of life is much slower and relaxed than Britain where everyone appears to be rushing around. Many ex-pats commented that their life was now much less stressful than it had been in the UK.

Although a large proportion of Brits emigrating abroad are retired people hoping for a warmer and relaxing climate to live, families and younger people are now also making the move to up and leave the UK for good. Increased crime rates and anti-social behavior in nearly all towns in the UK is a worry for many and often a reason that many are now looking for a safer life abroad. In many cities throughout the UK, gang culture has increased with more knife and gun crimes been committed than ever before. Glasgow and London both have high crime rates compared to most other European cities. Many people feel unsafe on the streets of the UK and are now opting for a safer life for their family in a country with less crime and a better quality of life. Countries like Greece and Italy have a stronger family ethic then we appear to have in the UK, which is an attraction for many when moving abroad.

In addition to the rising crime throughout cities in the UK, an increase in rules and regulations in the British society is also beginning to have a negative effect on many people. This is especially true of young people who are looking for adventure and willing to try out another lifestyle abroad in a country which appears to be more welcoming and less dictating than the UK. For many of us disheartened by the British society it can often feel that we are told what we must eat, how much to drink and where we can smoke. For some the country has now become too politically correct and we are often afraid to open our mouths for fear we offend someone when we speak.

Whether it be Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia it appears that the British are unsatisfied with their lives in the UK and will continue in their search for the perfect life away from miserable and wet Britain.

Did you know:

1) In 2011 it was reported that 1000 people are leaving the UK every day in search of warmer climates and a higher standard of living.

2) Of these 1000 people, over 40% are British Citizens.

3) Recent reports suggest that there are presently 3.4 million British people living abroad, which is 7% of the British population.

4) 15% of these Brits living abroad are classified as skilled professionals, such as doctors, paramedics and lawyers.

5) One of the contributing factors why people are leaving the UK is the increase in house prices and cost of living. In London in 2011 the average price of a house was over 400,000 pounds which is making it difficult for many young people to get on the property ladder.

6) Many wealthy Britons are now considering moving abroad due to high taxes and increased crime. 19% of British Citizens with savings of over a quarter of a million have said they would consider moving abroad.

7) Of those wealthy Britons questioned, 46% have cited crime and anti-social behaviour as the most popular reason for wanting to move.

8) 41% of the wealthy Britons believe life is more stressful in the UK than other European countries, which have a slower, more relaxing pace to life.

9) The foreign embassy has reported an average of 4000 visa applications per week for people wishing to move abroad, compared with just 300 per week ten years ago.

Mao did:
'the Laogai system consists of three distinct types of reform: convict labor (Laogai), re-education through labor (Laojiao), and forced job placement (Jiuye)'.


We will leave public policy dealing with imprisonment and return to education public policy and to segue to this we can easily see our Race to the Top and the corporatization of K-12 tied to testing and tracking students from pre-K throughout to vocations determined by that testing ----to FORCED LABOR PLACEMENT.
BUSH/OBAMA set into motion this Chinese Mao system of institutions telling the parents and children where and what classes they will pursue according to the same global education testing being installed in the US with Race to the Top/Common Core. These corporate neo-liberal education policies have been in place in International Economic Zones overseas and are now being installed in the US just for that purpose. Global corporations and the 1% will decide how a child is processed through K-12 with the ending of public schools and the tying of K-12 schools to corporate campuses under the guise of 'community charters'. We have spoken much about this but for today I want to link the movement of the US to Mao's POLITBURO Marxism by looking at political structures in transition.

Academics know Pearson and this testing policy comes directly from Asian nations having neo-liberal education  policies for decades.  We know Chinese education uses these testing and evaluation data to track children into vocations regardless of parental or student desire.  That is what authoritarian societies do.  We are already seeing this done in cities like Philly and Baltimore these several years because politics is so crony the candidates allowed to win are only SHOW ME THE MONEY AND I WILL DO ANYTHING WALL STREET SAYS people.  Baltimore's public schools are gone and almost all corporate charters being sold as community charters using SCHOOL CHOICE to track students by testing.  Many parents are sold that this is simply getting those pesky low-achievers out and providing high-achieving public schools but as usual-----when you allow injustice for one IT BECOMES INJUSTICE FOR ALL.  The goal will be to capture all ability to track a child into whatever vocation global corporations want.  This means if a child is tracked into a pathway leading to APPRENTICESHIP at 6th grade----there's that free labor under re-education---------there will be nothing a parent can do to change this.  Remember as well, in International Economic Zones parents feverishly fight to just get their children into a white collar tracking not for the money---because white collar sweat shops may pay $20-30 a day ----but to keep that child from being at risk of enslavement at the working class level.

PEARSON AND K-12 TESTING WILL LEAD TO FORCED JOB PLACEMENT AND IT IS ALL BROUGHT TO THE US BY FAR-RIGHT CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA WALL STREET GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS/NEO-CONS NOW MOVING TO BECOME 1% LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS.

These are all Republican policies folks with Clinton/Obama neo-liberals being far-right so don't blame the Democratic Party -----Democratic voters simply have yet to be able to be rid of Wall Street global pols! BUT WE WILL----STORM CLOUDS GATHERING!




March 17, 2015

Concerns rising over Pearson, the company behind PARCC and other tests
Some parents, critics ask if 'Goliath' has too much power in assessing N.J. students


Education Testing New Jersey PAPA PARCC Pennsylvania Teachers
By Sharon Lurye

This year, five million kids in the United States, including New Jersey, will take a new standardized test -  the PARCC. Potential new teachers in Pennsylvania will take a new certification test – the PAPA. And thousands of men and women who never finished high school will be betting their futures on the results of a proficiency exam – the GED.


What do all these tests have in common? The company that administers them: Pearson.
Pearson, a London-based international publishing and education company which originally started in construction in 1844, has become a colossus in the U.S. education system. On every level of education, the company has a presence and a product to sell.
"The [Department of Education] informed us that Pearson is monitoring all social media during PARCC testing. I have to say that I find that a bit disturbing...." – Watchung Hills superintendent Elizabeth Jewett, in an email sent to other superintendents


Teachers use Pearson’s PowerSchool and SchoolNet software to record student grades and a host of other data. Pearson sells textbooks aligned to the Common Core curriculum which means by extension aligned with the PARCC test – a controversial curriculum and test being promoted by the federal government to better prepare students for the global economy. 

THIS MEANS THAT ALL INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES AROUND THE WORLD WILL BE TAUGHT THROUGH THESE SAME INFORMATION CHANNELS----CONTROLLING ALL INFORMATION.

And Pearson has a huge presence in higher education, where it helps universities to run online classes.  
Pearson has power. With almost 900,000 New Jersey students taking the PARCC test this month, some parents and critics are asking: how much power, exactly?
“We have this Goliath standardized, computerized test created and administered by a private corporation,” said Marian Raab, a parent in Maplewood, New Jersey, and a vocal critic.
Over the weekend, in fact, concerns about Pearson intensified when it was revealed the company was monitoring the social media accounts of New Jersey students in the midst of taking the PARCC test. 
Last week, Elizabeth Jewett, schools superintendent for the Watchung Hills Regional School district in Warren, New Jersey, sent an email to other superintendents after the district received a late night call from the state's Department of Education.


"Last night at 10PM, my testing coordinator received a call from the NJDOE that Pearson had initiated a Priority 1 Alert for an item breach within our school," Jewett wrote to her peers. "The information the NJDOE initially called with was that there was a security breach DURING the test session, and they suggested the student took a picture of a test item and tweeted it. After further investigation on our part, it turned out that the student had posted a tweet (NO PICTURE) at 3:18PM (after school) that referenced a PARCC test question. The student deleted the tweet and we spoke with the parent – who was obviously highly concerned as to her child’s tweets being monitored by the DOE.


"The DOE informed us that Pearson is monitoring all social media during PARCC testing. I have to say that I find that a bit disturbing – and if our parents were concerned before about a conspiracy with all of the student data, I am sure I will be receiving more letters of refusal once this gets out (not to mention the fact that the DOE wanted us to also issue discipline to the student). I thought this was worth sharing with the group."


The district has acknowledged that Jewett sent the email, which was first published online by former Newark Star-Ledger columnist Bob Braun.
In a statement to the Washington Post, Stacy Skelly, vice president for corporate affairs at Pearson’s School division, defended the company's monitoring of student social media accounts for any mention of the PARCC test.
"The security of a test is critical to ensure fairness for all students and teachers and to ensure that the results of any assessment are trustworthy and valid," Skelly told the Post. "We welcome debate and a variety of opinions. But when test questions or elements are posted publicly to the Internet, we are obligated to alert PARCC states. Any contact with students or decisions about student discipline are handled at the local level."
Michael Yaple, a New Jersey Department of Education spokesman,  said monitoring the Internet to see if test questions were leaked was "not new, nor is it unique to this test."
"Test security measures to identify test breaches have been used in the past, even when New Jersey had paper tests. It is done in other states, and it is done with other tests," he said. 
But Yaple said he did not know if test security was previously provided by the test vendor or by DOE staff. 
"It is our intent to ensure that no one intrudes upon any student’s personal space. If we hear of instances where someone believes a vendor has overstepped its bounds, we will look into the matter," he said.


It's those privacy concerns, among others, that have prompted Raab to refuse to let her sixth-grade son take the PARCC and volunteer with Save Our Schools New Jersey, which opposes the culture of high-stakes standardized testing. She’s concerned about the amount of data that passes through Pearson’s servers.
“How does one company get a monopoly on judging our children like this?” Raab asked.





An Ohio student takes the PARCC test online.  (Ty Wright / AP)
PEARSON AND NEW JERSEY

Last week, New Jersey officials revealed details of the state's four-year contract with Pearson, which has started to administer and score the online PARCC tests this month.  Total cost: as much as $108 million.
Winning such a large contract is nothing new for Pearson.
A financial report on Pearson’s website noted that 13 million students in more than 70 countries last year used PowerSchool, a gradebook software. There were also 600,000 downloads of its PowerSchool app for iPhone.
More than 10 million students are in schools that use Schoolnet, software that creates student assessments and then analyzes the results so that teachers can make “data-driven decisions.” In New Jersey, 27 school districts launched Schoolnet last year, and 14 more implementations are in progress.


"We were the largest textbook publisher...we are also the largest trustee of student data," said Jonathan Harber, the CEO of Pearson K-12 Technology, at an Education Datapalooza conference at the White House in 2012.


Pearson says that its innovative use of data can move the educational field forward in many ways, from allowing parents to keep track of their kid’s homework to helping students decide what college to attend.


“Public and private partnerships can actually make a positive difference for our learners,” Skelly told PhillyVoice. “We take investments that perhaps would be difficult for states or school districts individually to make, and we’re investing in innovation.”

PHILLY HAPPENS TO BE TIED TO TRACKING STUDENTS VOCATIONALLY BY THESE TESTS AS IS BALTIMORE.


“Nobody wants a monopoly. You want to be able to choose the best deal from whomever, whatever services you want. But this one company is controlling everything.” – Kim Gibson, Burlington City mother


All student data belongs to the state; Pearson does not own any of it. Nevertheless, Raab is concerned about the sheer amount of personal data that a hacker could steal if Pearson’s security was breached.
“PowerSchool is how you as a public school parent check your child’s grades….How do we know that Pearson is protecting our children’s data?” she asked.

Kim Gibson, a mother of three in Burlington City, shares Raab’s reservations about the PARCC test. When she speaks about Pearson, she accidentally calls the company “he” – almost like Pearson is an actual person, a Big Brother of sorts.
“My issue is who developed the test. It’s Pearson. He developed the test; they developed the textbooks for the class, all the materials to help you pass the test. It’s my understanding they even developed all the GED materials in case you don’t pass high school because you failed the test,” she said.

Pearson, in fact, partnered with the non-profit Council on American Education to run the General Educational Development test, or GED, in 2011.
“It really seems like it’s a monopoly to me that this one person is controlling – or this one company is controlling – all this educational stuff,” Gibson said.
But Pearson doesn’t have the kind of control that people think it has, according to Skelly.



“I think one of those big, big misconceptions is that Pearson somehow sets policy,” she said. “We simply don’t operate that way. The only people that set state policy are the people who are elected to do so.”

AND FOR WHOM DO THOSE ELECTED WORK? GLOBAL CORPORATIONS LIKE PEARSON.

Both mothers used the word "monopoly" to describe Pearson, but it’s not the only private company selling products to the public school system. Public schools have had relationships with private companies since the beginning of their history, and in the assessment business, Pearson faces competition from companies like McGraw Hill, Measured Progress, Educational Testing Service (ETS), of Princeton, as well as the Data Recognition Corp., which has the contract for scoring Pennsylvania’s state assessment tests.
“We compete in a competitive environment for contracts or opportunities to work with customers… we are held accountable by the people that we work for and with,” Skelly said.
One Brookings Institute study from 2012 found that, out of 45 states surveyed, 12 used Pearson for their primary state standardized tests. By federal law, states must give these tests each year from third grade to eighth, plus once in high school.
According to the Software and Information Industry Association, testing and assessment sales through high school have increased 57 percent over the last three years of its annual survey. For the 2012-2013 school year, sales represented almost $2.5 billion.
Standardized tests and curriculum are nothing new in education. But few have generated the kind of concerns and opposition facing the PARCC tests. 
PARCC, or the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers, is a consortium of 11 states and the District of Columbia that banded together to develop new assessments based on the Common Core standards. The idea behind these standardized test consortiums is to make education more uniform across the country – so that it’s possible to accurately compare New Jersey students to students anywhere else in the country, or even the world.
This international comparison may become easier in the future, since Pearson is designing the framework of the 2015 and 2018 PISA tests, tests used internationally to score student achievement. 
Joining a consortium is also a way to save on costs, as states can pool resources and exert greater bargaining power. Smaller states in particular can benefit.
"The general idea of collaborating is (that it’s) a way that states can get more bang for their buck," said Matthew Chingos, a researcher at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C.
When it came time to choose who would administer and score a test based on Common Core standards, every PARCC state chose to contract with one company – Pearson.




A student protests the PARCC test in New Mexico. (Russell Contreras/ AP) 


“PARCC states felt that for the sake of having a common experience and having comparable results, it was important to have a single vendor,” said David Connerty-Marin, director of communications for PARCC Inc., the non-profit organization that serves as a project manager on behalf of the consortium. 
The choice was also made easier by the fact that Pearson was the only company to bid on the contract. 
The American Institutes for Research, a non-profit organization that wanted to bid for the assessment contract, is now suing New Mexico. The state, which has been the scene of a number of student and parent protests over the PARCC test, took the lead in searching for a vendor and writing a contract that other states incorporated into their own pricing agreements.   
The organization alleges that the proposed contract was structured in such a way that only Pearson could possibly have fit the requirements.
"The Request for Proposals, issued on behalf of the PARCC consortium, was designed to allow all other PARCC states the ability to avoid competitive procurements, effectively committing a billion public dollars in a sole-source contract,” argued the American Institutes for Research.
Skelly said the process was still fair. Pearson’s 793-page bid, made available through an open records request, shows that it would work with rivals, such as ETS, as subcontractors for the PARCC test.


“Nobody else chose to bid. That’s the point, it’s a competitive environment,” Skelly said. “Nobody else offered their capabilities to meet the need. It’s an open and transparent process.”

“Nobody wants a monopoly,” said Gibson, the mother from Burlington City. “You want to be able to choose the best deal from whomever, whatever services you want. But this one company is controlling everything.”
But Pearson says that states are free to choose another company if the results of the PARCC are not satisfactory. 
“If we haven’t met the needs of our customer, we won’t get selected again. If we don’t hold up our end of the bargain…then it’s a competitive environment and somebody else could be selected in our place,” Skelly said. “Not only do we hold ourselves accountable, we are also rightly so held accountable by districts and parents and students.”
To increase accountability, Pearson has pledged that by 2018 it will make efficacy reports public on every product it creates in which it has invested at least $1 million. 
“It’s an initiative that Pearson has undertaken to essentially make sure that all of our products and services result in some kind of measurable outcome for our learners,” Skelly said. She did not specify those measurable outcomes.
PEARSON AND PENNSYLVANIA TEACHERS

Worry over standardized testing for children has been loud and well-publicized ever since the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001. 
In Pennsylvania, however, educators are voicing concern over other kinds of assessments – not tests given to students, but tests given to teachers.
Pennsylvania isn’t administering the PARCC tests, although it is a “participating” state in the consortium, meaning that it has been involved in some consortium activities without committing itself to the test.
“We didn't believe that a national test was the best route for Pennsylvania students,” said Jessica Hickernell, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. “We have state exams that we believe corresponded to our Pa.-specific academic standards.”
To get certified, however, prospective teachers in undergraduate programs in the state must pass a Pearson-administered basic skills test – PAPA, or the Pre-service Academic Performance Assessment. Many teacher education programs will not even accept students who fail a basic skills test.
“If they don’t pass PAPA, they don’t get to be in the program,” said Dr. Kira Baker-Doyle, a professor of education at Arcadia University in Glenside, Montgomery County. Students do have the option of submitting their high school SAT or ACT scores, but they can’t retake those tests in college to get a higher score.
Baker-Doyle said that the United States is unusual from an international perspective for contracting teacher licensing tests out to private companies.
“The United States, in using these third-party companies, has a very unique approach in comparison to a lot of the European nations and other nations that have much stronger kind of teacher professionalism,” she said.
 She also claimed that since Pennsylvania switched from using the Praxis tests (administered by ETS) to PAPA, passing rates have gone down, making it harder for people to become teachers in the first place.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education was not able to provide passing rate data on the PAPA, but Pearson confirmed that rates went down in a 2013 FAQ posted on the Pennsylvania Educator Certification Test website:
Q: How do you explain to students and their parents the sudden shift in pass rates (compared to the previous test) on the PAPA?
A: The PAPA is a new and different test. The passing score was set by the PDE based on the recommendations of a standard setting panel of Pennsylvania educators.Standardized tests also affect teachers once they’ve been certified, since evaluations of their job performance may be tied to student test scores.
“It forces you to see your student as a number, which is really sad,” Baker-Doyle said.
A more nuanced way to measure a teacher’s effectiveness is to actually see what they do in the classroom, rather than just looking at their students’ test scores. One idea is for student teachers to film themselves in the classroom and assemble these videos into a portfolio review, so that evaluators can assess the potential teacher directly on how they interact with students.
Baker-Doyle applauds this approach – but she and other educators are worried about a new development on the horizon.





Pearson PLC headquarters in the distinctive Shell Mex House on The Strand in London, off the Thames River. (Google StreetView)
'MOTIVATED BY FINANCIAL GAIN'The Pennsylvania Department of Education is working on a proposal to add another requirement for certification, involving the creation of a standardized video portfolio system. While teacher education programs would like to control the portfolio system themselves, the Department of Education is signaling that they’ll contract with a private company to film, store, and evaluate the portfolios. This company will almost certainly be either Pearson or ETS.
“This comes down to management of data…they’re trusting that Pearson and ETS can do a better job of doing that than schools of education,” said Baker-Doyle.
The Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Teacher Educators has written that it "objects vigorously to relinquishing the critical process of student teacher assessment to third-party vendors who do not know our teacher candidates, do not observe them personally in their classrooms, and are motivated by financial gain."
Representatives from Pearson and its rival, ETS,  attended PAC-TE’s Teacher Education Assembly in October to show off their products, and Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) officials asked for feedback, but PAC-TE complained that it was being offered a “forced choice” between two private companies.
“Although PDE officials have invited PAC-TE institutions to devise alternative systems, they have made it quite clear that such systems will not be considered unless they incorporate standardized, third-party components such as those offered by Pearson and ETS,” PAC-TE wrote.
The organization also pointed out that since many schools forbid the filming of students, there would be fewer schools allowing student teacher placements in the first place.
There is also the question of whether the private company would own these videos, and how the scores on video assessments might be connected to other standardized tests.
Scores from the video assessments of teachers could be linked to their students’ test scores, forming the basis of teacher evaluations. Then those evaluations – in a full turn of the circle – could be used to evaluate and rank the teacher education programs.
The PDE did not comment on any proposals for new pre-service teacher assessments.
Ultimately, the entire point of having an assessment system is to hold educational institutions accountable. The question that arises, then, is how do schools in turn hold those assessment systems – and the companies selling them – accountable.
How do states find out if a test really does measure a student’s readiness for college or career? One way to do that would be to see if the kids who get higher scores on the PARCC also have higher rates of college graduation or employment, but that data won’t be available for years.
As Skelly said, it’s the districts, parents and students that need to be paying attention now.

__________________________________________
The 1% Wall Street global corporate pols love China's ONE PARTY structure calling it best for FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM.  Following China's political system these few decades it became clear that the national POLITBURO was getting rich and those families being elevated were the same 1% of China.  Since Nixon opened China in the 1970s----Clinton moving US corporations over to International Economic Zones in the 1990s----Chinese politburo was simply national leadership being China's 1% garnering extreme wealth and power while the 99% of Chinese were laboring under MARXISM.  You can read how desperate Chinese national politburo leaders are to keep their wealth secret as the enslaved by Marxism population would revolt.  So, China under MAO was never about left-leaning communism---it was always MAO using Marxism for 1% Libertarian wealth and power accumulation under the guise of nationalizing all property.

What you see below is how a small committee has the power of policy with all levels below simply rubber - stamping those policies in exchange for simply allowed to be politburo members.  Now think how the US Congress has worked these few decades with the same Congressional pols re-elected for 20-30 years ----I know this was captured elections as standards of free and fair elections have disappeared since CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA stopped enforcing Federal election laws including ELECTION LAWS.  The American people have allowed these few decades a POLIBURO of insular leadership with what is called an inner-circle-----THE GANG OF FIVE------THE GANG OF FOUR-----garnering more and more power.  We have not had functioning committee actions-----chamber votes throughout this supposed AUSTERITY emergency after the 2008 crash.  We listen to our Congressional pols tell us they have no idea what Trans Pacific Trade Pact includes when we know many Congressional pols were involved in writing these policies for global corporations in their districts. 

We watched these few decades as Congress passes policy that then is simply rubber-stamped at state and local level-----no public voice in policy----the same capture of election at national level now has our state and local elections with candidates recruited to simply do what they are told----AND THEY DO. 

THIS IS THE CHINESE POLITBURO STRUCTURE.


How China is ruled: Politburo

• 8 October 2012
• From the section Asia-Pacific

        Politburo
Every significant decision affecting China's 1.3bn people is first discussed and approved by a handful of people - almost all men - on the party's political bureau (politburo), the nexus of all power in China.
The 24-member Politburo is elected by the party's central committee. But real power lies with its smaller standing committee, which works as a kind of inner cabinet and groups together the country's most influential leaders.
How the standing committee operates is secret. But its meetings are thought to be regular and frequent, often characterised by blunt speaking and disagreement.
Senior leaders speak first and then sum up, giving their views extra weight. The emphasis is always on reaching a consensus, but if no consensus is reached, the majority holds sway.
Once a decision has been made, all members are bound by it. Although policy disagreements and factional fighting are widely believed to take place in private, it is extremely rare for these to break into the public domain.
When they do - as happened in 1989 when the leadership battled over how to deal with the Tiananmen protests - it is a sign of an all-out power struggle.
Members of the standing committee also share out the posts of party general-secretary, premier, chairman of the National People's Congress, and head of the Central Discipline Inspection Commission.
The full politburo also tends to include party secretaries from big municipalities like Beijing and Shanghai, and from important provinces like Guangdong.
________________________________________
If you know Chinese political policy you would immediately know this phrase ----GANG OF SIX-----GANG OF FIVE----used in Congressional policy-making these several years comes from Chinese POLITBURO structure and entails handing policy-making power to the most senior of elected officials----

American democracy of course does not allow this as each elected member of Congress has equal rights to effecting legislation.  The use of this GANG OF FIVE process during this phony sequestration national economic emergency all manufactured by massive systemic Wall Street and corporate fraud was a transition to what 1% Wall Street global pols see as this ONE PARTY POLITBURO structure.  We know that Congress is now made mostly of millionaires and the people becoming the small central committee of gang members are those garnering the most wealth.



'The Gang of Four (simplified Chinese: 四人帮; traditional Chinese: 四人幫; pinyin: Sìrén bāng) was a political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and were later charged with a series of treasonous crimes. The gang's leading figure was Mao Zedong's last wife Jiang Qing. The other members were Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen.'[1]

The Fix

Immigration’s Gang of 8: Who are they?

The inside track on Washington politics.



By Rachel Weiner
The Fix
January 28, 2013

There's a new bipartisan gang in town known as the Gang of 8:

Eight senators who will unveil an immigration overhaul Monday.


Florida Sen. Marco Rubio/APComprised of four Republicans and four Democrats, the group came together remarkably quickly on an emotional and divisive issue that lawmakers have struggled to deal with for decades. What changed, obviously, was the 2012 election.
But why these eight senators? Here's a breakdown of everyone in the "Gang of Eight" and their reasons for getting involved.
The Republicans
* Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): The Cuban-American Rubio is positioning himself to run for president in 2016 as a candidate with broad demographic appeal, and he has been pushing for his own immigration reform plan in recent months. Rubio initially resisted the group's approach in favor of his own policy, but he joined in December after receiving assurances that the proposal would line up with his own ideas. For the rest of the group, having a popular conservative and rising Republican star gives the bill a much better chance at passage. For Rubio, it means not getting left out of what could well become law.
* Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.): Flake's libertarian-oriented brand of conservatism has always included a pro-immigration stance. It was the main issue rival Wil Cardon used against him in a Senate primary last year. In 2007, he worked with Rep. Luis Guitierrez (D-Ill.) on a guest worker program and path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. At the same time, as a Republican in Arizona he's also concerned about border security. Like Texas, Arizona has a large and increasing Hispanic population; Flake's electoral future is likely a consideration here too.

* Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): McCain is a long-time advocate of immigration reform who tried and failed to push a comprehensive overhaul back in 2006. He backed off in the 2008 election and into 2010, seeing that his position was toxic with the Republican base. (Who could forget McCain's "complete the dang fence" ad?) Now that the party has come around, it makes perfect sense that McCain will help lead the effort.

* Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): Like Flake and McCain, Graham has pushed for immigration reform before and has consistently argued that the GOP can't survive without it. Unlike either of them, he is very vulnerable to a conservative primary challenge next year. "No one will argue that Sen. Graham is taking the lead on this because of some political re-election calculation," said Walter Whetsell, a longtime South Carolina Republican strategist. "There are still many Republican voters in South Carolina that believe in a fairly rigid approach." But, Whetsell added, as the dynamic in the party shifts, Graham's consistency on the issue could ultimately serve him well.

 The Democrats

* Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): Durbin authored the original DREAM Act giving undocumented young students residency and a path to citizenship; he will want to be involved to make sure a bipartisan agreement isn't too watered down. He's also the Senate Majority Whip, so he will play a key role in rounding up Democratic votes for whatever the actual legislation winds up looking like.

* Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.): Menendez is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and has long been passionate on this issue. He introduced his own comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2010, when he was the only Hispanic member of the Senate. He was an early proponent of the DREAM Act, and along with Durbin has ties to pro-reform groups that will want to see a real pathway to citizenship.

* Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.): Schumer is the chairman of the Refugees and Border Security subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. He took over for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who tried and failed to pass a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration framework in 2007. Schumer and Graham attempted bipartisan talks in 2010.  And, Schumer is widely regarded as the next Democratic Senate leader so delivering on such a major issue would be (another) feather in his cap.

* Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.): Bennet has only been in the Senate since 2010, but he's already been staking out ground as a bipartisan reformer on the issue. It has relevance in Colorado, which is 20 percent Hispanic and ranks 12th in the nation for undocumented immigrants. Bennet recently developed a state compact on immigration with former Republican senator Hank Brown that calls for federal action and a "sensible path forward" for some undocumented immigrants. Bennet is also the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and could have his eye on the politics of a deal.

_____________________________________________

Each time these GANGS OF -----are a few powerful pols all tied to advancing this TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT governmental and societal change and they have the power of policy as Obama and Congress PRETEND under sequestration that everything must move FAST.  So, we bypassed our US Senate and House discussions on much of public policy because these GANGS OF had all the policy ready to submit and just moving that forward was the fastest consensus.  IT WAS ALL PLANNED----- and all centered on this US TREASURY default with sequestration creating this need to fast-track vital legislation and deferring full Congressional participation for ready-made GANGS OF policy.

This is the same format of Chinese POLITBURO.  These same small committees write all legislation and the rest of politburo rubber-stamp it-----as these policies passed Congress our state assemblies simply rubber-stamped them at state level and then our city halls did the same.  All across the nation citizens were shouting---both Republican and Democrat that no voices were being allowed in all these policy changes and it was all tied to a POLITBURO STRUCTURE OF POWERFUL SMALL COMMITTEES dictating policy down the line. 

IF A POL DOES NOT TOW THE LINE HE/SHE WILL NOT BE IN THE POLITBURO. 

Again, this complete takeover of American government came these few decades by CLINTON/BUSH and the DNC/RNC controlling candidates running at state and local level ----they obviously identified the WALL STREET PLAYERS most committed to doing this-----TELL THE TRUTH GREEK FRATS/SORORITIES------creating this ONE PARTY POLITBURO structure that will become the next stage of ONE PARTY 1% WALL STREET LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.

Here was Bernie Sanders back then

'Mr. Sanders said he respected Mr. Durbin for his good intentions. “But I think the direction in which he is going in working with some of the most very conservative members of the Senate is not correct,” Mr. Sanders said'.

It is no coincidence that all these GANGS OF are origin Clinton-era neo-liberals who voted Glass Steagall down, installed global markets, and started dismantling Federal government and privatizing all that is public as GOOD FAR-RIGHT 1% WALL STREET GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS.



‘Gang of Six’ in the Senate Seeking a Plan on Debt

By JACKIE CALMESAPRIL 16, 2011  NEW YORK TIMES



WASHINGTON — Days after President Obama called for forming a bipartisan group in Congress to begin negotiating a $4 trillion debt-reduction package, the parties have not even agreed to its membership. Yet six senators — three Democrats, three Republicans — say they are nearing consensus on just such a plan.
Whether the so-called Gang of Six can actually deliver something when Congress returns from a recess in May could determine whether Democrats and Republicans can come together to resolve the nation’s fiscal problems before the 2012 elections.
As Mr. Obama and Republican leaders have warred publicly over the budget, this small group of senators has spent four months in dozens of secretive meetings in offices at the Capitol and over dinner at the suburban Virginia home of Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat.
The senators have weathered criticism from bloggers and even colleagues, including the leaders of their own parties, who oppose tampering with Social Security or taxes. The gang nearly collapsed several times, including two weeks ago.
The group’s oldest members — Senator Richard J. Durbin, 66, a progressive from Illinois who counts the Senate’s only socialist as a friend and ally, and Senator Saxby Chambliss, 67, a genial Georgia conservative whose nasty first campaign left lingering bad feelings among Democrats, and who is a confidant of Speaker John A. Boehner — illustrate that even with the mounting federal debt intensifying the partisan divide over spending and taxes, the severity of the fiscal threat is forging unlikely alliances.


If Mr. Durbin and Mr. Chambliss can cut a deal on Social Security and new tax revenues, their associates say, then just maybe all of Washington can come together.
For Republicans, that means accepting higher taxes and lower military spending. For Democrats, it would mean agreeing to curbs on the unsustainable growth of Medicare and Medicaid spending, as well as tweaks to Social Security, to avert a big shortfall in 2037 and as a trade-off for Republicans’ support on taxes.


Continue reading the main storyMr. Durbin and Mr. Chambliss reached those conclusions last year, each confronting the widening annual gaps between projected revenues and spending as the population ages and health care prices rise.
Mr. Durbin, the No. 2 leader in the Senate, was on Mr. Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission, which recommended some solutions. Mr. Chambliss had joined informally with Mr. Warner to host private tutorials for Senate colleagues of each party with experts like Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman.

Several months ago, with Mr. Durbin as its most surprising yes vote, 11 of the 18 members of the president’s fiscal commission backed a blueprint to pare $4 trillion from projected deficits in the first decade. It would cut domestic and military spending; curb Medicare and Medicaid; and overhaul the tax code, limiting or repealing tax breaks and using the new revenues to lower tax rates and reduce deficits. Separate from its debt-reduction plan, the panel proposed benefit and payroll tax changes to stabilize Social Security for 75 years.
Immediately, Mr. Chambliss and Mr. Warner enlisted four senators from the commission majority to negotiate writing the recommendations into legislation. Besides Mr. Durbin, the others were Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who leads the Budget Committee, and Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, both Republicans.
“As I said to a Republican recently,” Mr. Durbin said in an interview, “it’s like we’re on a long flight here and we’ve come so far there’s no turning back — we’ve got to land the plane.”
The effort holds peril regardless of the outcome. If successful, a plan could be taken up as Congress debates this spring over raising the nation’s $14.2 trillion debt limit. But the group is hardly assured of support from Senate colleagues, let alone lawmakers in the House, where Republicans, including dozens of new Tea Party supporters, refuse to consider raising revenues. If the group fails, that would probably signal doom for the broader bipartisan effort Mr. Obama wants.


 Durbin, the liberal Democrat, and Mr. Chambliss, the conservative Republican, may have the most at stake. Mr. Durbin could be isolated in the Senate leadership, and Mr. Chambliss potentially vulnerable given Republicans’ penchant for ousting incumbents who deviate from the antitax line. Neither senator faces re-election until 2014.
An administration official recalled that in early 2010, when Mr. Durbin was named to Mr. Obama’s fiscal commission, another White House official told its co-chairmen, “You’ll never get Durbin’s vote.”
Nine months later, Mr. Durbin announced his support in The Chicago Tribune for the recommendations the chairmen had negotiated with members. “The question my closest political friends are asking is this: Why is a progressive like Dick Durbin voting for this deficit commission report?” he wrote. The answer: “Borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar we spend for missiles or food stamps is unsustainable.”
So, Mr. Durbin added, “when we engage in the critical decisions about our nation’s future budgets, I want progressive voices at the table to argue that we must protect the most vulnerable in our society and demand fairness in budget cuts.”
That has been his mantra with disappointed allies in labor, women’s groups and the Senate. Mr. Durbin, in the interview, cited a private meeting requested by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, a socialist and “a good friend.” Their exchange, Mr. Durbin said, captured the increasing difficulty in being a good progressive “at a time of limited resources.”


Mr. Sanders said he respected Mr. Durbin for his good intentions. “But I think the direction in which he is going in working with some of the most very conservative members of the Senate is not correct,” Mr. Sanders said.
Critics suggest that Mr. Durbin is seeking a new role to counter the prominence of Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, his roommate and his rival in the Senate leadership.
But Andy Stern, a former labor leader who was on the fiscal commission and opposed its report, defended Mr. Durbin, saying, “It’s classic Washington that we can’t imagine that someone does something because they think it’s the right thing to do.”

That is Mr. Chambliss’s claim as well. “I hear my critics; I pay attention to my constituents,” he said in an interview. “But you’ve got to do the right thing and what’s best for the country.”
And Mr. Chambliss has been increasingly outspoken in arguing that additional revenues must be part of a debt-reduction plan, given the scale of the problem.
“I’m taking arrows from some on the far right,” he told the Rotary Club of Atlanta in an appearance with Mr. Warner on Monday. “Are some people going to pay more in taxes? You bet.”
A bolt came in February from Grover Norquist, a Republican antitax activist, who wrote to Mr. Chambliss, Mr. Coburn and Mr. Crapo to say they would violate his group’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” if they supported raising revenues for deficit reduction.
The trio countered the same day, releasing a letter telling Mr. Norquist that their effort broke no pledge “but rather affirms the oath we have taken to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, of which our national debt may now be the greatest.”

 Perhaps more troublesome for Mr. Chambliss have been critics at home like Erick Erickson, a conservative blogger, Atlanta radio talk-show host and CNN contributor. “Is Saxby Chambliss Becoming a Democrat?” Mr. Erickson asked in a recent blog post.
For many actual Democrats, Mr. Chambliss remains negatively defined by his 2002 defeat of Senator Max Cleland, a triple-amputee veteran of Vietnam, after a campaign that included an ad picturing Mr. Cleland with Osama bin Laden. Mr. Chambliss’s work on the Gang of Six has done as much as anything to soften attitudes.

_______________________________________

Below you see how US Congress has adopted that Chinese Politburo structure of small committees having all the power of writing policy-----in each case these small committees control much of the policy-writing for specific legislation and most members are the senior members of Congress.  The American people had to sit during this SEQUESTRATION emergency and listen to GANGS OF THIS AND GANGS OF THAT controlling all the EMERGENCY legislation containing vital policy decisions often austerities that would make both Republican and Democratic voters mad----and they were always CLINTON/BUSH NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.

“Gang of Four” Congressional Intelligence Notifications


Description:"Gang of Four" intelligence notifications are oral briefings on sensitive non-covert action intelligence activities (including intelligence collection programs) that the Intelligence Community typically limits to the chairmen and ranking members of the two congressional intelligence committees, and at times to their respective staff directors. This report reviews the history of Gang of Four notification process and compares this procedure with that of the "Gang of Eight" notification procedure.

Creator(s):Cumming, Alfred
Location(s):United States
Creation Date:March 18, 2011


“Gang of Four” Congressional Intelligence
Notifications
Marshall Curtis Erwin
Analyst in Intelligence and National Security
April 16, 2013



Summary
“Gang of Four” intelligence notifications generally are oral briefings of certain particularly
sensitive non-covert action intelligence activities, including principally, but not exclusively,
intelligence collection programs, that the intelligence community typically limits to the chairmen
and ranking Members of the two congressional intelligence committees.
Gang of Four notifications are not based in statute but have constituted a practice generally
accepted by the leadership of the intelligence committees and that is employed when the
intelligence community believes a particular intelligence activity to be of such sensitivity that a
restricted notification is warranted in order to reduce the risk of disclosure, inadvertent or
otherwise. Intelligence activities viewed as being less sensitive typically are briefed to the full
membership of each committee.
In either case—whether a given briefing about non-covert action intelligence activities is limited
to the Gang of Four, or provided to the full membership of the intelligence committees—the
current statute conditions the provision of any such information on the need to protect from
unauthorized disclosure classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and
methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.
Congress has said that its intent in this regard is that in extremely rare circumstances a need to
preserve essential secrecy may result in a decision not to impart certain sensitive aspects of
operations or collection programs to the intelligence oversight committees in order to protect
extremely sensitive intelligence sources and methods. With regard to the phrase “other
exceptionally sensitive matters,” Congress has said its intent in using this phrase is to refer to
other extremely sensitive categories of classified information such as information concerning the
operational details of military deployment and extraordinarily sensitive diplomatic contacts,
which the intelligence committees do not routinely require to satisfy their responsibilities.
This report reviews the history of the Gang of Four notification process and compares this
procedure with that of the “Gang of Eight” notification procedure. The “Gang of Eight”
procedure is statutorily based and provides that that the chairmen and ranking Members of the
intelligence committee, along with the Speaker and minority leader of the House, and Senate
majority and minority leaders—rather than the full membership of the intelligence committees--
are to receive prior notice of particularly sensitive covert action programs, if the President
determines that limited access to such programs is essential to meet extraordinary circumstances
affecting vital U.S. interests.
____________________________

Here we have Obama as President telling our elected members of Congress to assume this GANG OF THIS AND THAT structure for all the critical legislation during sequestration and austerity.


'Again, this very modest change is now under a veto threat from the Obama administration.

Obama is asking that Congress doesn’t exercise its constitutional authority to conduct oversight out of a “long tradition of comity” (no kidding — here’s the veto threat letter). Look at how that “tradition” has worked out over the last decade.'

Gang of Eight Members Want a Bigger Gang
By Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel, ACLU

Washington Legislative Office
April 1, 2010 | 4:37 PM


The “gang of eight” is a group of members of Congress with a pretty sweet name that includes the leaders, both Democrat and Republican, of the Senate and House, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The “gang” is briefed on covert intelligence matters by the administration when the president “determines it is essential to limit access” to classified or national security information in “extraordinary circumstances.” The "gang" is also sworn to secrecy to not disclose this information to anyone, even other members of Congress.

Right now, there’s a transparency issue boiling between Congress and the administration. The House and Senate recently passed their intelligence authorization bills, and both chambers included a very important provision: a check on the president’s authority to single-handedly decide to only inform the “gang of eight” about important intelligence activities. In short, the bill's language would make the gang of eight a bigger gang to include the rest of the committee.
Frustratingly, President Obama is threatening to veto the legislation if requires the briefing of the other committee members.
It’s important to remember the purpose of the intelligence committees. In the 1970’s, the Church Committee investigated grave abuses of power in the name of national security. One of its core findings was that the complete lack of congressional oversight created fertile ground for executive overreach. It recommended that special committees in Congress be created to keep the intelligence and national security community within the confines of the law.
Thirty years later, the full intelligence committees can barely do their jobs. The executive branch takes advantage of this by withholding critical information from the full committees, often informing just the gang of eight as a way for the executive branch to hide its wrongdoing by isolating a small handful of members. This workaround allows the president to dump secrets on the gang of eight, and prevent them from conferring with their colleagues.
The House and Senate intelligence authorization bills make an important change in the underlying reporting statute. If a member of the gang of eight is briefed, and he or she objects to excluding the rest of the committee from the briefing, the executive branch must come in and brief the rest of the members of the committee on “general information regarding” the programs (House bill) or the “main features” of the intelligence activities (Senate bill). (See H.R. 2701 and S. 1494)
When it comes down to it, House Intelligence Committee Chairmen Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) aren’t asking for the moon. They are only asking that their committees be looped in so that they can properly do their jobs. The intelligence committees must be able to make fully informed decisions about some of the most important constitutional and human rights issues of our day. (Actually, all members of congress should be fully informed since they all vote on authorizing these programs — but that’s a fight for another day!)
Again, this very modest change is now under a veto threat from the Obama administration.
Obama is asking that Congress doesn’t exercise its constitutional authority to conduct oversight out of a “long tradition of comity” (no kidding — here’s the veto threat letter). Look at how that “tradition” has worked out over the last decade.
Let’s take a quick walk through history and think about when these wider briefings could have made a difference. The CIA’s use of torture? What if Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) was able to share her concerns with her colleagues? And what about warrantless wiretapping? Imagine if Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) wrote a letter and didn’t have to lock it in a drawer. Even the smallest amount of extra sunshine and oversight from Congress on these dark spots in history would have made a huge difference. Can you imagine Congress delaying oversight or putting limits on these authorities if the entire intelligence committees were informed?
Doesn’t it seem like the executive branch has claimed that it can pretty much do whatever it wants when it comes to terrorism? And hasn’t Congress, at times, rushed in to validate that position by passing laws authorizing the very intrusive program that had been operating secretly and illegally? To make matters worse, these executive powers, whether legal or not, continue to operate in ever more secrecy due to:

• The executive’s assertion of the state secrets doctrine, under which some federal courts are prevented from reviewing this activity independently, and,
• The administration’s increasing refusals to release information in response to FOIA requests.

The *only* true and reliable backstop left is congressional oversight.


On the campaign trail, President Obama, pledged openness and government transparency, declaring "no more secrecy." To see his administration threatening a veto on something that would help that goal is disheartening to say the least. If we’ve learned anything over the last decade, it’s that the executive branch — no matter who is president — cannot be trusted to check itself.

_____________________________________________

'The 24-member Politburo is elected by the party's central committee. But real power lies with its smaller standing committee, which works as a kind of inner cabinet and groups together the country's most influential leaders'.


The Bush neo-cons and the Clinton/Obama neo-liberals have always been the same ONE PARTY -----they called themselves THE CENTER but they were always this NEW WORLD ORDER ONE PARTY WORKING FOR THE GLOBAL CORPORATE TRIBUNAL.
This is why both Republicans and Democrats must take back these parties---it really does not matter if third parties are created because the election fraud is so obvious that a third party gaining any power will be impossible until our elections are free and fair. WE THE PEOPLE WILL BECOME WE THE ONE WORLD GLOBAL LABOR POOL IF WE DO NOT ENGAGE IN POLITICS AND USE OUR STRENGTH OF NUMBERS! 

How China Picks Its Leaders: A Chart
The Atlantic

• Brian Fung
• Nov 8, 2012
• Global

Explaining the People's Republic's five tiers of power
Party spokesperson Cai Mingzhao arrives for a press briefing ahead of the 18th party congress. (China Daily/Reuters)
Today marks the kickoff of China's 18th party congress, the once-per-decade political confab that has the country's biggest wigs formally appointing their next leaders in Beijing. The two men who will assume the most powerful posts in all the land will be Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang. Together, they'll represent 1.3 billion people, nearly a fifth of the world's population.
China may not be a democracy in the Western sense, but like any selection process, the circle of people who actually get a say in naming Xi and Li to the presidency and premiership is remarkably small. How small, you ask?
Here below is a stripped-down graphical representation of China's complex leadership structure.
Here's how it works: the National People's Congress brings together some 2,000 delegates. Those representatives are responsible for choosing between 200 and 300 members of what's called the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Out of those, 24 ascend to the ultra-powerful Politburo, which in the past has been responsible for many of China's major decisions. But it doesn't end there. Above the politburo sits the country's highest decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). It's effectively a seven-member inner cabinet staffed by China's most powerful individuals, who themselves are drawn from the 24-member politburo.
Just as with a Western cabinet, each of the PSC's members oversees a different policy domain. Xi Jinping, who's already a sitting member on the PSC, serves as vice chairman of the Communist Party's central military commission. Every member also represents a home district. In Xi's case, it's Shanghai.
Even though they're running the country, the president and premier are formally members of the PSC, and many of the decisions it makes have to be approved consensually. That means there's likely a lot of backchannel politicking ordinary Chinese don't get to see, much less Western observers. Hu Jintao, the current president, has floated the idea of making reforms to this hierarchical process. Until they actually happen, though, illustrations like these can help us understand what's going on.

 Most Americans see this slide into authoritarianism so what is most important today is breaking this capture of public policy information that is POSING PROGRESSIVE OR CONSERVATIVE.  This is why EDUCATION ON REAL PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES IS CRITICAL.

Americans have seen the convict labor----it sees the growing re-education through labor in internships, volunteerism, and job-training, job training, job training especially for ex-felons and long-term unemployed.

What we are not hearing is the connection to the Affordable Care Act with the heavy emphasis on preventative medicine with lots of mental health PHARMA and these forced labor camps.  Rehabilitation camps are for not only addictions but for what is deemed bad social behavior.

Earlier posts show the increasing use of PHARMA in mental health treatments especially for youth and often these treatments are not what the citizens' want----it is made the only pathway out.  Increasingly the terms of these treatments go on and on because addictions have always been known to be a life-long struggle.

Mao did:
'the Laogai system consists of three distinct types of reform: convict labor (Laogai), re-education through labor (Laojiao), and forced job placement (Jiuye)'.



'The PRC (People’s Republic of China) uses Laojiao to detain individuals it feels are a threat to national security or it considers unproductive.  Individuals in Laojiao may be detained for up to three years.  Because those in Laojiao have not committed crimes under PRC law, they are referred to as “personnel” rather than prisoners and they are not entitled to judicial procedure.  Instead, individuals are sent to the Laojiao following administrative sentences dispensed by local public security forces.  This vague detainment policy allows the PRC to avoid allegations that the individual’s arrest was politically motivated and to assert that they were arrested for reasons such as “not engaging in honest pursuits” or “being able-bodied but refusing to work.”'



'Beyond drug centers, Chinese authorities still have many ways to detain people without trial, rights activists said.
Police can detain sex workers, for example, under a mechanism known as "custody and education".
The terminology even appears to be interchangeable'.

The Affordable Care Act has buried in tons of policy the dismantling of citizens' protection against involuntary commitment.  We kept seeing on national news these several mass killings having shooters that should have been forced into treatment yet this happens so rarely as to the total loss of protection for all US citizens against forced psychiatric commitment. Please take time to read this from the State of Maine from 2001 when

CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA FAR-RIGHT 1% WALL STREET LIBERTARIANISM WAS MOVING FORWARD WITH THESE KINDS OF DETENTION.

Involuntary Commitment
Alicia CurtisBad Subjects, Issue # 58 , December 2001





For those of us who work in the mental health system, and for those who live with a mental illness, our work and our lives intersect with the legal system around a complex and delicate decision. In certain situations, people with a mental illness can be made to go into a psychiatric hospital or institution against their will. This process is called an involuntary commitment and every state has a law for it, although those laws are not well known. In the state of Maine, where I live and work, this law means that if a person has a mental illness, and if they are in imminent danger of harming themselves or someone else, they can be put into a psychiatric hospital against their will.

The police can initiate this process. They have the authority to take individuals into police custody if they have reason to believe the person has a mental illness and is at risk of substantial harm. Once the person is in custody, the police can then take them to the hospital for evaluation by a psychiatrist. If the psychiatrist believes this person to have a mental illness and to be in danger of imminent harm, the psychiatrist and another person fill out a certification of the need for involuntary commitment, which is also signed by a Justice of the Peace. This constitutes the initial involuntary commitment.

The slang term for the certification process that is used by both workers and patients in the mental health community is "blue paper." The form authorizing the involuntary commitment is blue, and the phrase is used liberally as a verb: "Gee, I hope they don't blue paper me." Slang adds a touch of drollness to a controversial act that represents a difficult decision for doctors, as well as an often very upsetting process for the person being "blue-papered," and sometimes their family. (Although sometimes the family gets upset if the person is not blue-papered.) This initial blue paper holds the ill individual in the hospital for five working days. At the end of these five days, patients may sign in to the hospital on a voluntary basis or they may be discharged. Alternatively, if the psychiatrist feels that the patient continues to be an imminent risk of harm to themselves or others, and if the patient continues to refuse to stay in the hospital on a voluntary basis, there is another, more formal process of commitment which involves a court hearing before a judge.

Many people outside of the mental health system are not necessarily aware of the law surrounding involuntary commitment. Yet most of the time those of us who work inside the mental health system take it for granted. I would like to step back from taking this law for granted and take a critical look at it.

From a civil rights perspective, involuntary commitment creates a class of people who, at the discretion of a police officer, can be taken briefly into police custody and then placed in a sort of preventive detention. Patricia Deegan is an ex-patient and activist who refers to long stays in psychiatric institutions as incarceration, a word that is chosen for its political charge but I think also speaks to the lived experience of the patient. Involuntary incarceration clearly imposes a different standard of civil "liberty" onto the mentally ill than that which is theoretically guaranteed to the rest of us. If you are not classified as mentally ill, can you be confined somewhere for something people believe you are going to do, but which you have not yet done? Is there any evidence that persons with mental illness are actually more dangerous to others than random members of the general public? These questions are starting places for looking beyond common assumptions about role that involuntary incarceration plays in the interplay between civil rights and civil protections.

For mental health professionals, the law can seem exceptionally frustrating when we are working with patients who are tormented and debilitated by their illness and unable or unwilling to receive treatment in the community. A patient who hears voices constantly, who exists in a state of fear about people she believes are trying to kill her, who does not take any medicines because she believes they are poisoned, and who is too distracted by her illness to cook meals or take showers, could probably not be committed to a hospital involuntarily. For those of us who entered a helping profession in order to help people who are suffering, this fact often feels like a tremendous failure of the system. Dr. Paul Chodoff, who has written several articles on the topic, points out that the focus of the involuntary commitment law on "imminent harm" as the main criterion for commitment, leads psychiatrists to feel frustrated that their work is aimed more at serving the police state in keeping dangerous people off the streets than in carrying out the aims of psychiatry. He argues that the involuntary commitment law should be broadened to allow commitment of those with a mental illness who need hospitalization due to the severe state of their illness, whether they are dangerous or not.

The existing law about involuntary commitment is the result of a long dialectic between an attitude of paternalism toward the mentally ill and ideals of personal freedom and civil liberty. Both the state and the profession of psychiatry have evidenced paternalism towards those with a mental illness, which contrasts with constitutional rights that were revisited in the civil rights movements of the 1960s. Involuntary commitment has also been shaped by the history of psychiatry. The perceived need for involuntary hospitalization is a result of the way that psychiatric treatment was conceptualized and practiced in the nineteenth century. It also arises out of a social contract, wherein the State and the profession of psychiatry join forces to protect the public from a group of people who are seen as both terrifying and burdensome.

The practice of involuntary commitment also arose as a result of the creation of the psychiatric institution as both the locus and the means for treatment of insanity. The institution was born of several different social forces. In early New England there had been a smattering of psychiatric hospitals, which had mostly started as single wards within general hospitals and had grown into separate buildings. Starting in 1810 there was a movement towards building psychiatric hospitals and institutions that continued to gather steam throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. This occurred in the context of overall changes in social welfare policy; there were new ideas and practices about the State being responsible for the indigent and the troubled, and other institutions for special populations such as the feeble-minded or epileptics were built at this time. The Victorian era brought a lower tolerance for disorder and deviance, and a sense of urgency about maintaining public safety and social order. At the same time there was a growing sense of idealism and excitement about the possibilities of a cure for mental illness. Whereas previous treatments for mental illness (exorcisms, bloodletting, emetics and purges) had generally not been successful and had contributed to a sense that insanity could only be subdued or confined, the new moral treatment being practiced in England promised the rehabilitation of the insane.

Maine's public psychiatric hospital was built in the early nineteenth century to illustrate these new ideas and treatments. The Maine Insane Hospital (often referred to at the time as the "Maine Insane") was built in 1840 in Augusta, Maine. Governor Dunlop's speech before the Maine Legislature in 1830, in which he advocated for the creation of such an institution, clearly expressed the rhetoric of collective social responsibility and hope for a cure: "Humanity loudly calls for appropriate means of relieving and restoring to enjoyment and usefulness"[those bereft of reason]"which means, are now not only beyond the reach of the poor and friendless, but cannot be commanded by the ordinary ability of our citizens or towns, on whom the duty of providing for their support may fall." In keeping with the ideas of moral treatment, the entire structure and experience of the hospital was designed as a kind of treatment. The buildings and grounds represented a clean and orderly environment which would restore the disordered mind to order. There was proper ventilation to dissipate the bad vapors of insanity. Besides the physical environment of the hospital, there was work, or occupational therapy. The hospital was part of a 220 acre working farm, which represented the key point of moral treatment. As the first report of the hospital to the Maine legislature in 1841 stated: "Employment of some kind is essential to the recovery of the insane. No employment is so congenial to the human constitution as agriculture."

A hospital like this was seen as the means of treatment for insanity, and so the means of getting treatment was for the mentally ill to enter the hospital. The only problem was, how was it determined who needed treatment, and thus needed to be in the hospital? Psychiatry was a fairly young profession with few standard ideas about mental illness. Was it a disease of the organs and physical body like other diseases, or a disease of the humors and spirits? This was still a matter of debate. The only available basis for diagnosis was behavior, and for a young profession in a socially repressive age, the behaviors that supposedly expressed mental illness were often the same as the behaviors that expressed social aberrance, deviance, and "immorality." Many people were hospitalized with a diagnosis of "moral insanity." This concept may have been a precursor to the current diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, but it also included such Victorian no-nos as masturbation and extramarital sex. There were also claims that husbands brought their wives to institutions just to be rid of them.

The commitment law was created as a move toward reform. In 1874, Mrs. E.B.W. Packard, a one-woman whirlwind of a reform movement, successfully lobbied in the state of Maine for passage of a law to protect against wrongful commitment. She had been committed to an institution by her husband, a Calvinist minister, for arguing with him about Calvinist theology and feminism. Historians believe that Mrs. Packard probably did have a psychotic disorder, but that she would not need to be hospitalized according to modern standards. Before passage of the commitment law, in some states a husband could commit a wife to a psychiatric institution solely at the discretion of the superintendent of the institution. Mrs. Packard felt that a law creating a more formal process of commitment would bring order and justice to the system. In practice, though, people continued to be committed involuntarily for reasons having more to do with social control than psychiatric treatment.

Husbands ridding themselves of wives via the psychiatric institution was still enough of a problem in the 1930s that the first woman in Maine's legislature, Gail Laughlin, authorized a bill penalizing husbands for bringing false testimony in the involuntary commitment hearings of their wives. I worked with a patient who in the 1960s had been brought to the hospital by her husband. The chief complaint listed on the admitting record was: "Patient does not do her housework." I think she did actually have a recurrent depression, a symptom of which was her inability to care for herself and her home, but there was obviously a large overlap conceptually between mental illness and not functioning in a proscribed social role. There is also a large history of the forced treatment of of homosexuality as mental "illness." One gay man I know has a familiar story. He was brought, as a teenager, to a psychiatric hospital in the Midwest by his parents, when they found out he had been having gay sex. He was involuntarily committed to the institution and treated for his homosexuality. (The treatment didn't work).

Until the 1960s, the voice of paternalism asserted the need for involuntary commitment. But as African-Americans and women struggled for civil rights, there was renewed discussion and activism about civil rights for the mentally ill. Arguments for increased freedoms for the mentally ill took two paths, one somewhat fruitful and one less fruitful. Against the voice of paternalism, some people posed the radical question: Is there even such a thing as mental illness? For example, R.D. Laing made the famous argument that mental illness is a privileged state, an alternative viewpoint on the world. This argument at least challenged many assumptions of the mental health profession and caused them to be re-examined. On the other hand, the psychiatriast Dr. Thomas Szasz wrote a history of how early psychiatrists (such as Bleuler and Krepelin) created the diseases of mental illness by classifying certain behaviors that were disturbing to society in general, under the heading of a diagnosis, despite no evidence at the time of a cellular-level disease process. He viewed this process as the manufacture of disease, a sort of large-scale hoax which created and justified the social roles of psychiatrist and mental patient, and justified the practice of placing these patients against their will in a psychiatric institution. He regarded all of this as nothing more than a sanctioned form of social control. He saw a tacit contract existing between society as a whole and the class of psychiatrists, in which psychiatrists arrange to confine and control persons disturbing to society, in return for a social regard as members of the medical profession.

Neither R.D. Laing's nor Thomas Szasz' arguments ultimately changed the laws and practices of institutions and involuntary commitment as much as did the arguments based on the principles of freedom and personal liberty intrinsic to America's self-definition. These arguments hold that despite the existence of mental illness, and despite the fact that the mentally ill might benefit from treatment, personal freedom is a higher order good than treatment. This focus on ideas of civil liberty coincided with a conceptual shift in the 1970s regarding the locus and modalities of treatment of mental illness. The institution had devolved from being a type of treatment to being a type of warehouse, and the community was seen as the best healing environment. Models of community-based treatment, like the community mental health center and assertive community treatment, also known as the ACT model, were developed. This change in thinking and practice shaped the current commitment law, which is based on the idea that someone cannot be detained or confined without extremely good cause. It also limits the duration of involuntary commitment, and ensures that no one individual or stakeholder may make commitment decisions. Currently dangerousness is the standard for commitment, as dangerousness is a relatively simple standard to define. But dangerousness is also a highly convenient standard, both because the criminal justice system already confines people who have been determined to be dangerous, and because of continuing public fears about the alleged dangerousness of those with a mental illness.

This spring there was news in the New York Times that political dissidents in China were being forced into special psychiatric hospitals run by the police and given electro-shock therapy against their will. The mainstream organization of Chinese psychiatrist decried this practice. However this phenomenon makes obvious that wherever the mechanism of involuntary commitment exists, the possibility for abuse co-exists. It is still possible to distort the language and practice of psychiatry to overlap with social control. For instance a Chinese official discussed the idea of a political mania, the symptoms of which would be unreasonable suspicion, excessive and unhealthy energy directed in an obsessive manner to political organizing, despite the obvious negative social consequences of this activity. In any troubled relationship between the powerful and the less powerful, like the relationship between a repressive totalitarian government and a dissident citizen, or between parents and a gay teenager, or between husband and wife in a patriarchal society, the language and ideas of psychiatry and mental health practice are open to abuse as a form of social control. In these instances, the mechanism of involuntary commitment is also open to abuse as a way to confine those who are threatening to the social or political order.

I therefore hope to see the practice of involuntary commitment continue to evolve as a balance between civil liberty and the need to care for those who cannot adequately address their own safety. I would not wish for the end of involuntary commitment, because I still view it as a way to provide treatment to those who refuse out of the fear, hopelessness, and suspicion that a mental illness can bring, and who might not otherwise survive.

Alicia Curtis is a psychiatric social worker and a writer.
__________________________________________
We see during the REAGAN administration the deregulation of our mental health system at the same time he was closing all the mental health facilities and sending them to the streets----he was dismantling Federal protections against involuntary commitment in 1991 sending what funding tied to MEDICAID down to local county governments to create their own system of handling the mentally ill.  Republicans love this stuff until it comes home to them and indeed these loosing of mental health laws now tied to police and jailing will hit Republican voters as hard as Democrat.  Just an aside for my Republican friends the Affordable CAre Act is written as a back door to taking away gun ownership rights for what is a broad definition of mental illness.  This can now mean any level of depression or drunken fighting.  ACA says a person found under the treatment for mental health can have his/her gun rights taken away indefinitely---and everyone knows addiction is for life.  So, the Republican voters who always want to end Federal protections and bring policy locally always have the extreme wealth and power telling 99% what to do.

This discussion is not about the gun laws it is about losing citizen rights to psychiatric commitment and forced drugging.

The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act - Involuntary Commitment Act of 1967



The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, often abbreviated LPS, concerns the involuntary civil commitment of individuals for psychiatric treatment in California. Since the passage of this involuntary commitment law, there have been significant changes in the mental health delivery system, and the law is now being interpreted in a manner that adversely impacts hospitals and their emergency departments.
Although numerous efforts have been undertaken in the last decade to make the law “work,” these efforts have failed to improve the fragmented and inconsistent application of the law and have placed additional unfunded burdens on hospitals.


Historical Overview


The intents of the LPS Act were to end the inappropriate and indefinite commitment of mentally disordered persons; to provide prompt evaluation; to guarantee and protect public safety; to safeguard individual rights through judicial review; to provide individualized treatment, supervision and placement services; to encourage the full use of all existing agencies, professional personnel and public funds to prevent duplication of services and unnecessary expenditures and to protect mentally disordered persons from criminal acts.



In the four decades since the enactment of the original LPS Act, much has changed in how care is delivered to individuals with mental illness in California. In 1991, a major change occurred with the enactment of the Bronzan-McCorquodale Act (Chapter 89, Statutes of 1991), referred to as “realignment.” Realignment transferred financial responsibility for most of the state’s mental health care from the state to local governments. The core principle under realignment was to provide expanded discretion and flexibility to counties. From 1995 through 1998, there was also a major shift in county obligations within the Medi-Cal program. In order to provide counties more flexibility in the use of state funding, and to enable more integrated and coordinated care, the state developed a plan to consolidate the two Medi-Cal funding streams for mental health. A decision was made to “carve out” specialty mental health services from the rest of Medi-Cal managed care, making California’s Medi-Cal mental health program entirely managed by local government.
As realignment and consolidation was taking place, the number of community hospitals accepting individuals in need of involuntary LPS care (“designated” facilities) decreased dramatically. At the same time, the five state hospitals operated by the California Department of Mental Health (DMH) were accepting fewer and fewer community referrals unless the individual was committed by court action or in connection with criminal proceedings.

Finally, the passage of the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) in 1996 did not consider the impact of California involuntary treatment laws on hospitals and has resulted in a growing dependence on hospitals as the treatment provider of last resort, regardless of a hospital’s capacity, capability or competency to care for this population.


Current State of Affairs


Today, California’s local mental health delivery system relies on a complex and shifting patchwork of federal, state and local funds and varies dramatically from county to county and from year to year, based on the policy and the political landscape at all levels of government. In many communities, an increasing number of individuals with mental illnesses are becoming homeless or incarcerated with many others remaining untreated or under-treated. This will be exacerbated as the state attempts to meet its court-ordered obligation to relieve overcrowding in state prisons and expands coverage to individuals formally uninsured.


The enactment of the federal Wellstone-Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 and the implementation of California’s Medi-Cal Section 1115 “Bridge to Recovery” Demonstration Waiver are adding to the complexity.
With each county having unique infrastructure, program design and administration, there is significant diversity in the level and types of mental health services available. For example, in California, 25 of 58 counties have no inpatient psychiatric services and 44 counties have no child/adolescent inpatient psychiatric facilities. This has led to an increased and often inappropriate dependence on hospital emergency rooms (often the only 24/7 service available) to become the default psychiatric services provider. This is occurring without regard to a hospital’s county-determined, involuntary designation status nor their ability to care for the involuntary patient population.
Hospitals in some areas of the state have seen a 400 percent increase in the past year in the number of individuals with psychiatric disorders being seen in their emergency departments. Some hospitals have been forced to admit patients with acute psychiatric needs to their medical floors while awaiting placement in a facility providing psychiatric services. This places hospitals in an untenable situation of violating both their licensing laws and the civil rights of the patient.


During the writing of the LPS Act in 1967, a locally funded and provided community mental health system was never envisioned. As a result, no legal mechanisms were established to ensure those individuals who are too ill to accept or access mental health treatment would be compelled to do so. Thus, these individuals have become the frequent users of both inpatient psychiatric services and hospital emergency rooms. They are the “revolving door” patients with short-term usage of expensive hospital services as their primary locus of treatment. Once discharged from the hospital, these individuals frequently decompensate rapidly and either end up back at the hospital or become a threat to public safety. With the reduction in involuntary acute care beds, emergency rooms and jails have become the treatment settings of last resort. Mechanisms must be developed so that these individuals can be resolutely treated in the community rather than continue to cycle through the system.

Counties are also liberally interpreting the involuntary commitment laws – the LPS Act – to meet the local infrastructure needs of law enforcement, emergency transportation providers, county mental health departments, judicial services and community treatment providers. This has led to wide variations in application of the law from county to county, from city to city and even from hospital to hospital. All too often, these interpretations are to the detriment of patients, hospitals and the staff caring for them and may not be protecting the patients’ civil liberties or providing equal and consistent protections as prescribed in law.
Given the importance of ensuring that hospitals and their emergency departments are available to those in need of life-saving treatment, we must efficiently use our limited resources. It is well documented that failing to provide adequate mental health care will lead to higher social, personal and economic costs. The criteria in California’s LPS laws must be updated to incorporate current medical science regarding mental illness; correspond more closely with the Medi-Cal definition of “medical necessity” and provide treatment before unnecessary social, criminal justice and/or medical consequences occur.


For More Information:
www.calhospital.org/overview/lanterman-petris-short-lps-act
Contact:
Sheree Kruckenberg
Vice President, Behavioral Health

________________________________________
The ACA was progressive posing from the start---it is a Republican think tank health policy so we know it is not public interest health care policy.  As the statement below says----

'Critics point out that there are some limits to the law. One criticism is that there will not be enough mental health providers to accommodate the expected demand'.

There have never been enough mental health professionals and when Reagan closed all the public mental health clinics this became worse so we KNOW THEY ARE NOT GOING TO BRING IN REAL MENTAL HEALTH treatment.  They are going to increase PHARMA and tie treatment to rehabilitation camps.  Mental health treatment by labor.  While US citizens are pushed to sign out for this we are already seeing the structures being built and of course Wall Street Baltimore Development and its 'labor and justice' NGOs are already touting all addicts need is labor.

Americans just watched as these few decades of dismantled oversight and accountability saw health industry fraud soar----hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud each year with Medicaid being hit hardest.  So, if ACA seems to have the interests of low-income workers in mind with sending more and more funding to mental health treatment at the same time Bill Gates and his PHARMA global corporations centers on mental health PHARMA patents----AND as we see the installation of forced labor tying to rehabilitation---we see tons of Federal Medicaid funding going to these 'rehabilitation' structures that will be part of a global corporate campus.

ARE WE REALLY BELIEVING THE SAME POLS THAT DISMANTLED A STRONG PUBLIC MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM IS NOW CONCERNED ABOUT THOSE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES?

Affordable Care Act Expands Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Benefits and Federal Parity Protections for Over 62 Million Americans

02/20/2013

The Affordable Care Act builds on the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 to extend federal parity protections to 62 million Americans. The parity law aims to ensure that when coverage for mental health and substance use conditions is provided, it is generally comparable to coverage for medical and surgical care. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) builds on the parity law by requiring coverage of mental health and substance use disorder benefits for millions of Americans in the individual and small group markets who currently lack these benefits, and expanding parity requirements to apply to millions of Americans whose coverage did not previously comply with those requirements.

Now a global corporation will be given those Medicaid mental health funds to build its own idea of what is good for employees needing REHABILITATION.  WAKE UP FOLKS----GETTING SUBSIDIES WHILE USING PEOPLE AS FORCED LABOR FOR THEIR OWN GOOD.  How could that lead to bad motives?

Employee Assistance Programs

As workplaces began to instate alcohol-free and drug-free policies, the U.S. Department of Labor joined in the effort to help reduce the effects of addiction in the workplace. Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) grew out of these efforts to help employees overcome addiction problems. Prior to these efforts, employers would either terminate an employee or monitor and limit the likelihood of any potential problems caused by an employee’s condition. While this approach may have helped employees keep their jobs, it did little to address their underlying addiction problems.

An employer may house an EAP division within their human resource department or contract with an EAP vendor to provide services for employees. Since alcohol and drug addictions are classified as medical conditions, federal health laws require EAP representatives to keep all information regarding an employee’s condition confidential. If you’re considering entering a rehabilitation program and need to take a leave of absence, an EAP representative can help you make whatever work schedule arrangements are needed.


Working with an Employee Assistance Program

involves following a treatment plan agreement, which is developed during a series of counseling sessions with a representative. The counseling sessions allow EAP representatives the chance to assess your condition and make the needed referrals for treatment. A treatment plan agreement includes a timeline for completion and spells out the conditions of your work schedule, be it a modified schedule or leave of absence.


Rehabilitation Options

Alcohol and drug rehabilitation options can vary depending on the level of treatment needed to help you get back to a normal, productive lifestyle. An EAP rep will base this decision on the information you provide during the initial counseling sessions. The most commonly used rehabilitation options include inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment, therapy and 12-step programs (AA or NA). For some people, a combination of two or more options may be necessary.
Inpatient treatment will require you to stay in a treatment facility, most often for a minimum of 30 days. These facilities work best for someone who has a long-term addiction that requires an initial detoxification period. During this time, patients undergo therapy to help address whatever life issues contribute to the addiction. Patients also learn coping skills to help them avoid using alcohol or drugs. Inpatient stays are typically followed up by outpatient treatment. This involves checking in with treatment professionals on a regular basis and attending 12-step programs on a frequent basis.
If you’re at the early stages of an addiction, the EAP representative may refer you to an outpatient program at the start. During the early stages, the physical effects of addiction haven’t reached the point where your life is spinning out of control. As long as you’re determined to stop using, outpatient treatment involving therapy sessions and regular 12-step meetings can help you recover from an addiction.


* Treatment Trends


Many alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers report their admission and discharge rates on a national survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, also known as SAMHSA. Based on survey information collected in 2008 and 2009, alcohol and drug treatment trends show:

• 9.3 percent of the US population had an addiction to alcohol or illegal drugs
• Only 11.2 percent of this group actually received treatment from a rehab facility
• 1.8 million admissions to treatment facilities were reported in 2008
• 41.4 percent of the 1.8 million admissions resulted from alcohol addiction
• 20 percent of the 1.8 million admissions resulted from heroine and opiate addictions
• 17 percent of the 1.8 million admissions resulted from marijuana addictions

Leaves of Absence

As drug rehabilitation treatment can take considerable chunks of time out of a person’s daily schedule, working with an employer’s EAP allows you to coordinate your treatment schedule with your work schedule without placing your job at risk. For people who require inpatient treatment, this provision can mean the difference between keeping a job and losing a job. In some cases, outpatient treatment programs may require patients to attend therapy and 12-step meetings on a frequent basis throughout the week. Knowing your employer’s EAP program can accommodate this schedule can also provide relief from worry about losing your job.
An EAP representative can also refer you to a treatment program that offers partial hospitalization as opposed to inpatient care. Partial hospitalization is used in cases where an employee requires more treatment than an outpatient program provides. With a partial hospitalization program, patients attend therapy and 12-step meetings during the day and return home at night. This course of treatment may actually require a shortened leave of absence from work, which is something an EAP can accommodate.

REMEMBER-----GETTING A HOSPITAL BED ON TODAY'S HEALTH PLANS IS HARDER FOR FOLKS HAVING LIFE-AND-DEATH MEDICAL PROBLEMS----MENTAL HEALTH PATIENTS WERE PUSHED FROM MOST HEALTH SYSTEMS.


Other Considerations

An employer’s EAP representative may refer you to an outpatient treatment program based on your need for treatment as well as other factors that affect your situation. As inpatient programs can be quite expensive, some employees may not be able to afford the costs involved, especially if their health insurance only covers a portion, or in some cases, none of the costs. An EAP rep may also make an outpatient program referral in cases where an employee has a supportive family environment that will ensure the employee follows through on the requirements of the program.
Ultimately, the level of structure a person needs to get addictive behaviors under control will determine whether an inpatient or outpatient treatment approach is needed. This means some people may prefer to maintain a work schedule while attending therapy and 12-step meetings, as work provides the kind of structure they need. As different situations call for different courses of treatment, the more an employer EAP representative knows about you, the more likely you’ll receive the type of treatment you need.
If you prefer to not discuss your treatment with your employer in any way, including with an EAP representative, you can opt for a private outpatient treatment program that offers a modified schedule. With these programs, you may be able to continue your normal work schedule while seeking treatment.

_____________________________________
As Americans fight for the right of privacy surrounding health issues the Affordable Care Act has built all the mechanisms to make all health data available to employers and now the employers are building their own preventative health branches with Federal funding funneled to them as knowing best what our health care and mental health care should look like.  Someone who struggles with depression for example will have no way of keeping the from an employer and these are the people who will be shuttled over to these rehabilitation forced labor camps under the guise of treatment that never ends.

This is also selective and will be used in retaliation/oppression of workers as they are now made fearful of being sent to these rehabilitation treatment labor statuses.

The percentage of people deemed sociopaths is around 5%----not coincidental to the 5% working for the !% who SHOULD BE SEEKING TREATMENT for lying, cheating, and stealing.  As well, this same group is the highest in drug and alcohol use and yes, ON THE JOB.  They will not be the ones tested or placed into these rehabilitation structures.



600 State Office Building
St. Paul, MN 55155
Anita Neumann, Legislative Analyst
anita.neumann@house.mn Updated: June 2010



Workplace Drug and Alcohol Testing


This information brief summarizes the provisions of Minnesota’s Drug and
Alcohol Testing in the Workplace Act.

Who is Covered

The law applies to all employers, defined as “any person or entity located or doing business in
this state and having one or more employees,” and includes the state and all political or other
governmental subdivisions. The act defines “employee” as any person, including an independent
contractor or person working for an independent contractor, who performs services for
compensation. Job applicants are also protected. A job applicant is any person who has applied
for work with an employer and anyone who has a job offer contingent upon passing a drug or
alcohol test.


When Testing is Permitted


Drug and alcohol testing of employees and applicants is permitted only as explicitly authorized
by statute. Testing can only be done under a written drug and alcohol testing policy that meets
statutory requirements and must be conducted by an accredited or licensed testing laboratory.


Drug and alcohol testing is permitted only in the following circumstances:


House Research Department Updated: June 2010
Workplace Drug and Alcohol Testing Page 2


• Job applicant testing. If a job applicant has received a conditional job offer, the
employer may require or ask that applicant to undergo testing, as long as all
applicants who receive conditional job offers for the same position are required or
asked to undergo testing.
• Routine physicals. An employer may require employees to take a test as part of a
routine physical offered by the employer, as long as the physical takes place no more
than once a year and the employee receives at least two weeks’ written notice of the
testing requirement.
• Random testing. An employer may require employees to submit to random testing
only if they are employed (1) in safety-sensitive positions, defined in the statute as
jobs in which an impairment caused by drug or alcohol usage would threaten the
safety or health of any person, or (2) are professional athletes and subject to a
collective bargaining agreement permitting random testing.
• Reasonable suspicion testing. An employer may require an employee to take a test if
there is a reasonable suspicion that the employee is under the influence of drugs or
alcohol; has violated the employer’s written rules on drug or alcohol use, possession,
sale, or transfer while on the job, at the job site, or while operating the employer’s
vehicle, machinery or equipment; has sustained a personal injury or caused another
employee to sustain a personal injury; has caused a work-related accident; or was
operating a vehicle or other equipment involved in a work-related accident.
• Treatment program testing. If an employer has referred an employee to a chemical
dependency treatment or evaluation program or if the employee is participating in
chemical dependency treatment under the employee’s benefit plan, the employer may
request or require the employee to submit to testing without notice during the
evaluation or treatment period and for two years after the end of any prescribed
treatment.

____________________________________
Drug testing for employment has historically hit the low-wage jobs and the feelings of privacy have stopped corporations from taking these kinds of testings too far.  As we see the labor test industry tied to preventative care has these stocks soaring-----this is all the health care over 70% of Americans are now receiving----and this Medicaid as mental health will have these tests soar as well.  This has nothing to do with quality care and strong public mental health structures---this is all tied to the forced labor as rehabilitation and we will see drugs required in courses of treatment that people cannot opt out of.

As always they install this by outsourcing all these policy to corporate non-profits and small businesses while posing small business economy----but these corporate policies will be folded into the global health systems in each state and they will work as a team minus any small business or public input.


'Today, ten cents worth of chemicals are sold for $30 to as much as $100. Drug testing is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry'.



It's Time to End All Drug Testing
Wednesday, 12 March 2014 14:53 By The Daily Take Team, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed




(Photo: Micah Baldwin / Flickr)As the reality of legalized marijuana inches closer and closer every day, more and more Americans are rethinking our society’s attitude towards drugs.
But not the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
In a recent white paper, the organization argued that we should start expanding drug testing at schools and in the workplace.
As that paper’s author put it,
“The major need today is the wider and smarter use of the currently available drug testing technologies and practices.… Smarter drug testing means increased use of random testing rather than the more common scheduled testing, and it means testing not only urine but also other matrices such as blood, oral fluid (saliva), hair, nails, sweat and breath.”


I couldn’t disagree more.


Drug testing is counterproductive, degrading, and invasive, and it’s we put an end to it once and for all.
Although humans have used narcotics and intoxicants since the dawn of time, drug testing as know it is a relatively new phenomenon, and really took off with Nixon’s War on Drugs.
I had a friend back in the early 1970s - let’s call him Stanley - who sold drug purity testing kits out of the back of High Times magazine. It was a good business because it cost about ten cents for the drug-testing chemicals and he sold the testing kit for ten bucks plus shipping. By the 1980s, though, once the drug testing hysteria took off, he got really rich by selling his little drug-testing company for several million dollars.
The reason Stanley was able to sell his testing kits for such a big markup, of course, was that they’re hugely profitable. Today, ten cents worth of chemicals are sold for $30 to as much as $100. Drug testing is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry.

And it’s only gotten bigger.


According some estimates, approximately 84 percent of all American employers require pre-employment drug tests.


This is absolute insanity.


There is little proof that drug tests do anything other than make testing companies rich. That’s because as the ACLU has concluded,
“…drug tests do not measure impairment. Rather than looking for drugs, drug tests look for drug metabolites…As a result, drug tests mainly identify drug users who may have used a drug on the weekend, as they might use alcohol, and who are not under the influence of a drug while at work or when tested.”


That’s the biggest problem with drug testing. If an employee’s drug use actually affects their job performance, then their employer can and should have a discussion with them about it - and if they’re seriously impaired, get them into therapy or out of the job. Any other probing into an employee’s out of work behavior is just a violation of their basic right to privacy.
Think of it this way: there are a whole bunch of things that can affect someone’s job performance. Health issues, financial issues, spousal issues, quality of sleep, you name it. And if any one of those things becomes a problem, then an employer should work it out with his or her employee.
But if we took the principle behind drug testing to its logical conclusion, then we’d let employers install cameras in their workers’ houses to see if they getting a full night’s sleep. After all, poor sleep can impair many people worse than moderate drug use.
Of course, people would say that monitoring employees’ sleep is an insane idea. But it’s just as insane as making people pee into a cup to work at a factory.
There is maybe a case to be made that some jobs, like being a commercial airline pilot, are so dangerous that we should require drug testing for them.
But I know from years of experience as a pilot and passenger that the people who work in the airline industry are so concerned about their safety, as well as the safety of their passengers, that they will self-regulate even without the threat of getting fired after a failed drug test.
And what’s more, the work and pay schedules of some airlines - particularly the commuters, who pay their workers less than Burger King managers and have them work grinding hours - have been demonstrated to be a serious safety problem, one that’s arguably worse than any problem casual drug use could cause.
Ultimately, drug-testing gives people a false sense of security. And false positives regularly cost people time, money, and sometimes even their careers.
Most importantly, though, drug testing cuts at the core of our right to privacy. It gets us used to regularly having our privacy - including the privacy of our own bodies - invaded.


It promulgates the false meme that the Fourth Amendment is porous, when in fact it’s very clear in saying that our government has no right to mandate the inspection of your person or papers without getting a warrant first.
It also promotes the worst ideas about what it means to be both a drug user and a worker in America.
It promulgates the false meme that drug abuse should be a criminal matter, when in fact it’s a medical matter.
And it promulgates the false meme that employers are kings who can do whatever they want to their employees, when in fact employers should be treating their employees with respect.
What you do on the weekends and in the privacy of your own home is your business and your business alone, and no one should be allowed to punish you for it.
We need to end all drug testing beyond what is totally voluntary.
Let’s make America once again the “Land of the Free.”

______________________________________

'First, this paper may appear to paint a gloomy picture of future threats and abuses.
For academic scientists in medicine and health who have followed these few decades the growth and medicine around THE BRAIN---one sees good uses and bad. As this ethicist tells us there is a propensity for great bad. Mind control----creating the conditions where machines or drugs tell the truth and a citizen does not -----creating multiple tiered levels of class and ability from testing and analysis already happening. If it was not for the breakdown in all US public health ethics, morals, and patient rights in the pursuit of health industry profits we may think those in leadership would make these discovers for the good. People with no morals, ethics, rule of law profiting anyway they can will become DR NO.

Please take time to read this article or others on the bioethic concerns of THE BRAIN research and coming patents and treatments.  The laws around this are not there as too the citizen protections.

The Neuroscience Revolution, Ethics, and the Law

1. Home
2. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
3. Focus Areas
4. Bioethics
5. Resources
6. The Neuroscience Revolution, Ethics, and the Law

     
Henry T. Greely

"There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face;
He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust."1


The lament of Duncan, King of Scotland, for the treason of the Thane of Cawdor, his trusted nobleman, echoes through time as we continue to feel the sting of not knowing the minds of those people with whom we deal. From "we have a deal" to "will you still love me tomorrow?", we continue to live in fundamental uncertainty about the minds of others. Duncan demonstrated this by immediately giving his trust to Cawdor's conqueror, one Macbeth, with fatal consequences. But at least some of this uncertainty may be about to lift, for better or for worse.
Neuroscience is rapidly increasing our knowledge of the functioning, and malfunctioning, of that intricate three-pound organ, the human brain. When science expands our understanding of something so central to human existence, these advances will necessarily cause changes in both our society and its laws. This paper seeks to forecast and explore the social and legal changes that neuroscience might bring in four areas: prediction, litigation, confidentiality and privacy, and patents. It complements the paper in this volume written by Professor Stephen Morse, which covers issues of personhood and responsibility, informed consent, the reform of existing legal doctrines, enhancement of normal brain functions, and the admissibility of neuroscience evidence.


Two notes of caution are in order. First, this paper may appear to paint a gloomy picture of future threats and abuses. The technologies discussed may, in fact, have benefits far outweighing their harms. It is the job of people looking for ethical, legal, and social consequences of new technologies to look disproportionately for troublesome consequences — or, at least, that's the convention. Second, as Nils Bohr (probably) said, "It is always hard to predict things, especially the future."2 This paper builds on experience gained in studying the ethical, legal, and social implications of human genetics over the last decade. That experience, for me and for the whole field, has included both successes and failures. In neuroscience, as in genetics, accurately envisioning the future is particularly difficult as one must foresee successfully both what changes will occur in the science and how they will affect society. I am confident about only two things concerning this paper: first, it discusses at length some things that will never happen, and, second, it ignores what will prove to be some of the most important social and legal implications of neuroscience. Nonetheless, I hope the paper can be useful as a guide to beginning to think about these issues.



I. PREDICTION


Advances in neuroscience may well improve our ability to make predictions about an individual's future. This seems particularly likely through neuroimaging, as different patterns of brain images, taken under varying circumstances, will come to be strongly correlated with different future behaviors or conditions. The images may reveal the structure of the living brain, through technologies such as computer-assisted tomography (CAT) scans or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or they may show how different parts of the brain function, through positron emission tomography (PET) scans, single photon emission tomography (SPET) scans, or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Neuroscience might make many different kinds of predictions about people. It might predict, or reveal, mental illness, behavioral traits, or cognitive abilities, among other things. For the purposes of this paper, I have organized these predictive areas not by the nature of the prediction but by who might use the predictions: the health care system, the criminal justice system, schools, businesses, and parents.
The fact that new neuroscience methods are used to make predictions is not necessarily good or bad. Our society makes predictions about people all the time: from a doctor determining a patient's prognosis, to a judge (or a legislature) sentencing a criminal, to colleges using the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to automobile liability insurers setting rates. But although prediction is common, it is not always uncontroversial.


The Analogy to Genetic Predictions


The issues raised by predictions based on neuroscience are often similar to those raised by genetic predictions. Indeed, in some cases the two areas are the same — genetic analysis can powerfully predict several diseases of the brain, including Huntington disease and some cases of early-onset Alzheimer disease. Experience of genetic predictions teaches at least three important lessons.

First, a claimed ability to predict may not, in fact, exist. Many associations between genetic variations and various diseases have been claimed, only to fail the test of replication. Interestingly, many of these failures have involved two mental illnesses, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Second, and more important, the strength of the predictions can vary enormously. For some genetic diseases, prediction is overwhelmingly powerful. As far as we know, the only way a person with the genetic variation that causes Huntington disease can avoid dying of that disease is to die first from something else. On the other hand, the widely heralded "breast cancer genes," BRCA 1 and BRCA 2, though they substantially increase the likelihood that a woman will be diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer, are not close to determinative. Somewhere between 50 and 85 percent of women born with a pathogenic mutation in either of those genes will get breast cancer; 20 to 30 percent (well under half) will get ovarian cancer. Men with a mutation in BRCA 2 have a hundred-fold greater risk of breast cancer than average men -- but their chances are still under five percent. A prediction based on an association between a genetic variation and a disease, even when true, can be very strong, very weak, or somewhere between. The popular perception of genes as extremely powerful is probably a result of ascertainment bias: the diseases first found to be caused by genetic variations were very powerful — because powerful associations were the easiest to find. If, as seems likely, the same holds true for predictions from neuroscience, such predictions will need to be used very carefully.

Finally, the use of genetic predictions has proven controversial, both in medical practice and in social settings. Much of the debate about the uses of human genetics has concerned its use to predict the future health or traits of patients, insureds, employees, fetuses, or embryos. Neuroscience seems likely to raise many similar issues.


Health Care


Much of health care is about prediction — predicting the outcome of a disease, predicting the results of a treatment for a disease, predicting the risk of getting a disease. When medicine, through neuroscience, genetics, or other methods, makes an accurate prediction that leads to a useful intervention, the prediction is clearly valuable. But predictions also can cause problems when they are inaccurate (or are perceived inaccurately by patients). Even if the predictions are accurate, they still have uncertain value if no useful interventions are possible. These problems may justify regulation of predictive neuroscientific medical testing.


Some predictive tests are inaccurate, either because the scientific understanding behind them is wrong or because the test is poorly performed. In other cases the test may be accurate in the sense that it gives an accurate assessment of the probability of a certain result, but any individual patient may not have the most likely outcome. In addition, patients or others may misinterpret the test results. In genetic testing, for example, a woman who tests positive for a BRCA 1 mutation may believe that a fatal breast cancer is inevitable, when, in fact, her lifetime risk of breast cancer is between 50 and 85 percent and her chance of dying from a breast cancer is roughly one-third of the risk of diagnosis. Alternatively, a woman who tests negative for the mutation may falsely believe that she has no risk for breast cancer and could stop breast self-examinations or mammograms to her harm. Even very accurate tests may not be very useful. Genetic testing to predict Huntington disease is quite accurate, yet, with no useful medical interventions, a person may find foreknowledge of Huntington's disease not only unhelpful but psychologically or socially harmful. These concerns have led to widespread calls for regulation of genetic testing.3


The same issues can easily arise through neuroscience. Neuroimaging, for example, might easily lead to predictions, with greater or lesser accuracy, of a variety of neurodegenerative diseases. Such imaging tests may be inaccurate, may present information patients find difficult to evaluate, and may provide information of dubious value and some harm. One might want to regulate some such tests along the lines proposed for genetic tests: proof that the test was effective at predicting the condition in question, assessment of the competency of those performing the tests, required informed consent so that patients appreciate the test's possible consequences, and assurance of post-test counseling to assure that patients understand the results.


The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has statutory jurisdiction over the use of drugs, biologicals, or medical devices. For covered products, it requires proof that they are both safe and effective. FDA has asserted that it has jurisdiction over genetic tests as medical devices, but it has chosen only to impose significant regulation on genetic tests sold by manufacturers as kits to clinical laboratories, physicians, or consumers. Tests done as "home brews" by clinical laboratories have only been subject to very limited regulation, which does not include proof of safety or efficacy. Neuroscience tests might well be subject to even less FDA regulation. If the test used an existing, approved medical device, such as an MRI machine, no FDA approval of this additional use would be necessary. The test would be part of the "practice of medicine," expressly not regulated by the FDA.
The FDA also implements the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments Act (CLIA), along with the Center for Disease Prevention and Control and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CLIA sets standards for the training and working conditions of clinical laboratory personnel and requires periodic testing of laboratories' proficiency at different tests. Unless the tests were done in a clinical laboratory, through, for example, pathological examination of brain tissue samples or analysis of chemicals from the brain, neuroscience testing would also seem to avoid regulation under CLIA.


At present, neuroscience-based testing, particularly through neuroimaging using existing (approved) devices seems to be entirely unregulated except, to a very limited extent, by malpractice law. One important policy question should be whether to regulate such tests, through government action or by professional self-regulation.


Criminal Justice


The criminal justice system makes predictions about individuals' future behavior in sentencing, parole, and other decisions, such as civil commitment for sex offenders.4 The trend in recent years has been to limit the discretion of judges and parole boards to use predictions by setting stronger sentencing guidelines or mandatory sentences. Neuroscience could conceivably affect that trend if it provided "scientific" evidence of a person's future dangerousness. Such evidence might be used to increase sentencing discretion - or it might provide yet another way to limit such discretion.5
One can imagine neuroscience tests that show a convicted defendant was particularly likely to commit dangerous future crimes by showing that he has, for example, poor control over his anger, his aggressiveness, or his sexual urges. This kind of evidence has been used in the past; neuroscience may come up with ways that either are more accurate or that appear more accurate (or more impressive). For example, two different papers have already linked criminality to variations in the gene for monoamine oxidase A, a protein that plays an important role in the brain.6 Genetic tests may seem more scientific and more impressive to a judge, jury, or parole board than a psychologist's report. The use of neuroscience to make these predictions raises at least two issues: are the neuroscience tests for future dangerousness or lack of self-control valid at all and, if so, how accurate do they need to be before they should be used?
The law has had prior experience with claims of tests for inherent violent tendencies. The XYY syndrome was widely discussed and , accepted, , in the literature though not by the courts7, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Men born with an additional copy of the Y chromosome were said to be much more likely to become violent criminals. Further research revealed, about a decade later, that XYY men were somewhat more likely to have low intelligence and to have long arrest records, typically for petty or property offenses. They did not have any higher than average predisposition to violence.
If, unlike XYY syndrome, a tested condition were shown reliably to predict future dangerousness or lack of control, the question would then become how accurate the test must be in order for it to be used. A test of dangerousness or lack of control that was only slightly better than flipping coins should not be given much weight; a perfect test could be. At what accuracy level should the line be set?
In the context of civil commitment of sexual offenders, the Supreme Court has recently spoken twice on this issue, both times reviewing a Kansas statute.8 The Kansas act authorizes civil commitment of a "sexually violent predator," defined as "any person who has been convicted of or charged with a sexually violent offense and who suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder which makes the person likely to engage in repeat acts of sexual violence."9 In Kansas v. Hendricks, the Court held the Act constitutional against a substantive due process claim because it required, in addition to proof of dangerousness, proof of the defendant's lack of control. "This admitted lack of volitional control, coupled with a prediction of future dangerousness, adequately distinguishes Hendricks from other dangerous persons who are perhaps more properly dealt with exclusively through criminal proceedings."10 Id. at 360. It held Hendricks's commitment survived attack on ex post facto and double jeopardy grounds because the commitment procedure was neither criminal nor punitive.11
Five years later, the Court revisited this statute in Kansas v. Crane.12

It held that the Kansas statute could only be applied constitutionally if there were a determination of the defendant's lack of control and not just proof of the existence of a relevant "mental abnormality or personality disorder":


It is enough to say that there must be proof of serious difficulty in controlling behavior. And this, when viewed in light of such features of the case as the nature of the psychiatric diagnosis, and the severity of the mental abnormality itself, must be sufficient to distinguish the dangerous sexual offender whose serious mental illness, abnormality, or disorder subjects him to civil commitment from the dangerous but typical recidivist convicted in an ordinary criminal case.13
We know then that, at least in civil commitment cases related to prior sexually violent criminal offenses, proof that the particular defendant had limited power to control his actions is constitutionally necessary. There is no requirement that this evidence, or proof adduced in sentencing or parole hearings, convince the trier of fact beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court gives no indication of how strong that evidence must be or how its scientific basis would be established. Would any evidence that passed Daubert or Frye hearings be sufficient for civil commitment (or for enhancing sentencing or denying parole) or would some higher standard be required?
It is also interesting to speculate on how evidence of the accuracy of such tests would be collected. It is unlikely that a state or federal criminal justice system would allow a randomized double-blind trial, performing the neuroscientific dangerousness or volition tests on all convicted defendants at the time of their conviction and then releasing them to see which ones would commit future crimes. That judges, parole boards, or legislatures would insist on rigorous scientific proof of connections between neuroscience evidence and future mental states seems doubtful.


Schools

Schools commonly use predictions of individual cognitive abilities. Undergraduate and graduate admissions are powerfully influenced by applicants' scores on an alphabet's worth of tests: ACT, SAT, LSAT, MCAT, and GRE among others. Even those tests, such as the MCAT, that claim to test knowledge rather than aptitude use the applicant's tested knowledge as a predictor of her ability to function well in school, either because she has that background knowledge or because her acquisition of the knowledge demonstrates her abilities. American primary and secondary education uses aptitude tests less frequently, although some tracking does go on. And almost all of those schools use grading (after a certain level), which others can use to make predictions within the school or by others — such as other schools, employers, and parents.


It is conceivable that neuroscience could provide other methods of testing ability or aptitude. Of course, the standard questions of the accuracy of those tests would apply. Tests that are highly inaccurate usually should not be used. But even assuming the tests are accurate, they would raise concerns. Those tests might be used only positively, as Dr. Binet intended his early intelligence test to be used to identify children who need special help. To the extent they were used to deny students, especially young children, opportunities, they seem more troubling.
It is not clear why a society that uses aptitude tests so commonly for admission into elite schools should worry about their neuroscience equivalents. The SAT and other similar aptitude tests claim that student preparation or effort will not substantially affect student results, just as, presumably, preparation (at least in the short term) seems at least as unlikely to alter neuroscience tests of aptitude. The existing aptitude tests, though widely used, remain controversial. Neuroscience tests, particularly if given and acted upon at an early age, are likely to exacerbate the discomfort we already feel with predictive uses of aptitude tests in education.


Businesses

Perhaps the most discussed social issue in human genetics has been the possible use — or abuse — of genetic data by businesses, particularly insurers and employers. Most, but not all, commentators have favored restrictions on the use of genetic information by health insurers and employers.14 And legislators have largely agreed. Over 45 states and, to some extent, the federal government restrict the use of genetic information in health insurance. Eleven states impose limits on the use of genetic information by life insurers, but those constraints are typically weak. About 30 states limit employer-ordered genetic testing or the use of genetic information in employment decisions, as does, to some very unclear extent, the federal government through the Americans with Disabilities Act.15 And 2004 may well mark the year when broad federal legislation against "genetic discrimination" is finally passed.16

Should similar legislation be passed to protect people against "neuroscience" discrimination?


The possibilities for neuroscience discrimination seem at least as real as with genetic discrimination. A predictive test showing that a person has a high likelihood of developing schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, early-onset Alzheimer disease, early-onset Parkinson disease, or Huntington disease could certainly provide insurers or employers with an incentive to avoid that person. To the extent one believes that health coverage should be universal or that employment should be denied or terminated only for good cause, banning "neuroscientific discrimination" might be justified as an incremental step toward this good end. Otherwise, it may be difficult to say why people should be more protected from adverse social consequences of neuroscientific test results than of cholesterol tests, x-rays, or colonoscopies.
Special protection for genetic tests has been urged on the ground that genes are more fundamental, more deterministic, and less the result of personal actions or chance than other influences on health. Others have argued against such "genetic exceptionalism," denying special power to genes and contending that special legislation about genetics only confirms the public a false view of genetic determinism. Still others, including me, have argued that the public's particularly strong fear of genetic test results, even though exaggerated, justifies regulation in order to gain concrete benefits from reducing that fear. The same arguments could be played out with respect to predictive neuroscience tests. Although this is an open empirical question, it does seem likely that the public's perception of the fundamental or deterministic nature of genes does not exist with respect to neuroscience.
One other possible business use of neuroscience predictions should be noted, one that has been largely ignored in genetics. Neuroscience might be used in marketing. Firms might use neuroscience techniques on test subjects to enhance the appeal of their products or the effectiveness of their advertising. Individuals or focus groups could, in the future, be examined under fMRI. At least one firm, Brighthouse Institute for Thought Sciences, has embraced this technology, and, in a press release from 2002, "announced its intentions of revolutionizing the marketing industry."17


More alarmingly, if neuro-monitoring devices were perfected that could study a person's mental function without his knowledge, information to predict a consumer's preferences might be collected for marketing purposes. Privacy regulation seems appropriate for the undisclosed monitoring in the latter example. Regulating the former seems less likely, although it might prove attractive if such neuroscience-enhanced market research proved too effective an aid to selling.


Parents


The prenatal use of genetic tests to predict the future characteristics of fetuses, embryos, or as-yet unconceived offspring is one of the most controversial and interesting issues in human genetics. Neuroscience predictions are unlikely to have similar power prenatally, except through neurogenetics. It is possible that neuroimaging or other non-genetic neuroscience tests might be performed on a fetus during pregnancy. Structural MRI has been used as early as about 24 weeks to look for major brain malformations, following up on earlier suspicious sonograms. At this point, no one appears to have done fMRI on the brain of a fetus; the classic method of stimulating the subject and watching which brain regions react would be challenging in utero, though not necessarily impossible. In any event, fetal neuroimaging seems likely to give meaningful results only for serious brain problems and even then at fairly late stage of fetal development so that the most plausible intervention, abortion, would be rarely used and only in the most extreme cases.18
Parents, however, like schools, might make use of predictive neuroscience tests during childhood to help plan, guide, or control their children's lives. Of course, parents already try to guide their children's lives, based on everything from good data to wishful thinking about a child's abilities. Would neuroscience change anything? It might be argued that parents would take neuroscience testing more seriously than other evidence of a child's abilities because of its scientific nature, and thus perhaps exaggerate its accuracy. More fundamentally, it could be argued that, even if the test predictions were powerfully accurate, too extreme parental control over a child's life is a bad thing. From this perspective, any procedures that are likely to add strength to parents' desire or ability to exercise that control should be discouraged. On the other hand, society vests parents with enormous control over their children's upbringing, intervening only in strong cases of abuse. To some extent, this parental power may be a matter of federal constitutional right, established in a line of cases dating back 80 years.19
This issue is perhaps too difficult to be tackled. It is worth noting, though, that government regulation is not the only way to approach it. Professional self-regulation, insurance coverage policies, and parental education might all be methods to discourage any perceived overuse of children's neuroscience tests by their parents.


II. LITIGATION USES

Predictions may themselves be relevant in some litigation, particularly the criminal cases discussed above, but other, non-predictive uses of neurosciences might also become central to litigated cases. Neuroscience might be able to provide relevant, and possibly determinative, evidence of a witness's mental state at the time of testimony, ways of eliciting or evaluating a witness's memories, or other evidence relevant to a litigant's claims. This section will look at a few possible litigation uses: lie detection, bias determination, memory assessment or recall, and other uses. Whether any of these uses is scientifically possible remains to be seen. It is also worth noting that the extent of the use of any of these methods will also depend on their cost and intrusiveness. A method of, for example, truth determination that required an intravenous infusion or examination inside a full scale MRI machine would be used much less than a simple and portable headset.
The implications of any of these technologies for litigation seem to depend largely on four evidentiary issues. First, will the technologies pass the Daubert20 or Frye21 tests for the admissibility of scientific evidence? (I leave questions of Daubert and Frye entirely to Professor Morse.) Second, if they are held sufficiently scientifically reliable to pass Daubert or Frye, are there other reasons to forbid or to compel the admissibility of the results of such technologies when used voluntarily by a witness? Third, would the refusal — or the agreement — of a witness to use one of these technologies itself be admissible in evidence? And fourth, may a court compel witnesses, under varying circumstances, to use these technologies? The answers to these questions will vary with the setting (especially criminal or civil), with the technology, and with other circumstances of the case, but they provide a useful framework for analysis.


Detecting Lies or Compelling Truth


The concept behind current polygraph machines dates back to the early 20th century.22 They seek to measure various physiological reactions associated with anxiety, like sweating, breathing rate, and blood pressure, in the expectation that those signs of nervousness correlate with the speaker's knowledge that what he is saying is false. American courts have generally, but not universally, rejected them, although they are commonly used by the federal government for various security clearances and investigations.23 It has been estimated that their accuracy is about 85 to 90 percent.24


Now imagine that neuroscience leads to new ways to determine whether or not a witness is telling a lie or even to compel a witness to tell the truth. A brain imaging device might, for example, be able to detect patterns or locations of brain activity known from experiments to be highly correlated with the subject's consciousness of falsehood. (I will refer to this as "lie detection.") Alternatively, drugs or other stimuli might be administered that made it impossible for a witness to do anything but tell the truth — an effective truth serum. (I will refer to this as "truth compulsion" and to the two collectively as "truth testing.") Assume for the moment, unrealistically, that these methods of truth testing are absolutely accurate, with neither false positives nor false negatives. How would, and should, courts treat the results of such truth testing? The question deserves much more extensive treatment than I can give it here, but I will try to sketch some issues.


Consider first the non-scientific issues of admissibility. One argument against admissibility was made by four justices of the Supreme Court in United States v. Scheffer25, a case involving a blanket ban on the admissibility of polygraph evidence. Scheffer, a enlisted man in the Air Force working with military police as an informant in drug investigations, wanted to introduce the results of a polygraph examination at his court-martial for illegal drug use.26 The polygraph examination, performed by the military as a routine part of his work as an informant, showed that he denied illegal drug use during the same period that a urine test detected the presence of methamphetamine.27 Military Rule of Evidence 707, promulgated by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, provides that "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the results of a polygraph examination, the opinion of a polygraph examiner, or any reference to an offer to take, failure to take, or taking of a polygraph examination, shall not be admitted into evidence."
The court-martial refused to admit Scheffer's evidence on the basis of Rule 707. His conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which held that this per se exclusion of all polygraph evidence violated the Sixth Amendment.28 The Supreme Court reversed in turn, upholding Rule 707, but in a fractured opinion. Justice Thomas wrote the opinion announcing the decision of the Court and finding the rule constitutional on three grounds: continued question about the reliability of polygraph evidence, the need to "preserve the jury's core function of making credibility determinations in criminal trials," and the avoidance of collateral litigation.29 Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Souter joined the Thomas opinion in full. Justice Kennedy, joined by Justices O'Connor, Ginsburg, and Breyer, concurred in the section of the Thomas opinion based on reliability of polygraph evidence. Those four justices did not agree with the other two grounds.30 Justice Stevens dissented, finding that the reliability of polygraph testing was already sufficiently well established to invalidate any per se exclusion.31
Our hypothesized perfect truth testing methods would not run afoul of the reliability issue. Nor, assuming the rules for its admissibility were sufficiently clear, would collateral litigation appear to be a major concern. It would seem, however, even more than the polygraph, to evoke the concerns of four justices about invading the sphere of the jury even when the witness had agreed to the use. Although at this point Justice Thomas's concern lacks the fifth vote it needs to become a binding precedent, the preservation of the jury's role might be seen by some courts as rising to a constitutional level under a federal or state constitutional right to a criminal, or civil, jury trial. It could certainly be used as a policy argument against allowing such evidence and, as an underlying concern of the judiciary, it might influence judicial findings under Daubert or Frye about the reliability of the methods.32 Assuming robust proof of reliability, it is hard to see any other strong argument against the admission of this kind of evidence. (Whether Justice Thomas's rationale, either as a constitutional or a policy matter, would apply to non-jury trials seems more doubtful.)
On the other hand, some defendants might have strong arguments for the admission of such evidence, at least in criminal cases. Courts have found in the Sixth Amendment, perhaps in combination with the Fifth Amendment, a constitutional right for criminal defendants to present evidence in their own defense. Scheffer made this very claim, that Rule 707, in the context of his case, violated his constitutional right to present a defense. The Supreme Court has two lines of cases dealing with this right. In Chambers v. Mississippi, the Court resolved the defendant's claim by balancing the importance of the evidence to the defendant's case with the reliability of the evidence.33 In Rock v. Arkansas, a criminal defendant alleged that she could remember the events only after having her memory "hypnotically refreshed."34 The Court struck down Arkansas's per se rule against hypnotically refreshed testimony on the ground that the rule, as a per se rule, was arbitrary and therefore violated the Sixth Amendment's rights to present a defense and to testify in her own defense. The Rock opinion also stressed that the Arkansas rule prevented the defendant from telling her own story in any meaningful way. That might argue in favor of the admissibility of a criminal defendant's own testimony, under truth compulsion, as opposed to an examiner giving his expert opinion about the truthfulness of the witness's statements based on the truth detector results. These constitutional arguments for the admission of such evidence would not seem to arise with the prosecution's case or with either the plaintiff's or defendant's case in a civil matter (unless some state constitutional provisions were relevant).35
Assuming "truth tested" testimony were admissible, should either a party's, or a witness's, offer or refusal to undergo truth testing be admissible in evidence as relevant to their honesty? Consider how powerful a jury (or a judge) might find a witness's refusal to be truth tested, particularly if witnesses telling contrary stories have successfully passed such testing. Such a refusal could well prove fatal to the witness's credibility.


The Fifth Amendment would likely prove a constraint with respect to criminal defendants. The fact that a defendant has invoked the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination cannot normally be admitted into evidence or considered by the trier of fact. Otherwise, the courts have held, the defendant would be penalized for having invoked the privilege. A defendant who takes the stand might well be held to have waived that right and so might be impeached by his refusal to undergo truth testing. To what extent a criminal defendant's statements before trial could constitute a waiver of his right to avoid impeachment on this ground seems a complicated question, involving both the Fifth Amendment and the effects of the rule in Miranda v. Arizona.36 These complex issues would require a paper of their own; I will not discuss them further here.


Apart from a defendant in a criminal trial, it would seem that any other witnesses should be impeachable for their refusal to be truth tested; they might invoke the privilege against self-incrimination but the trier of fact, in weighing their credibility in this trial, would not be using that information against them. And this should be true for prosecution witnesses as well as defense witnesses. Both parties and non-party witnesses at civil trials would seem generally to be impeachable for their refusal to be truth-tested, except in some jurisdictions that hold that a civil party's invocation of the Fifth Amendment may not be commented upon even in a civil trial.


It seems unlikely that a witness's willingness to undergo truth testing would add anything to the results of a test in most cases. It might, however, be relevant, and presumably admissible, if for some reason the test did not work on that witness or, unbeknownst to the witness at the time she made the offer, the test results turned out to be inadmissible.
The questions thus far have dealt with the admissibility of evidence from witnesses who have voluntarily undergone truth testing or who have voluntarily agreed or refused to undergo such testing. Could, or should, either side have the power to compel a witness to undergo either method of truth testing? At its simplest, this might be a right to re-test a witness tested by the other side, a claim that could be quite compelling if the results of these methods, like the results of polygraphy, were believed to be significantly affected by the means by which it was administered — not just the scientific process but the substance and style of the questioning. More broadly, could either side compel a witness, in a criminal or a civil case, to undergo such truth testing as part of either a courtroom examination or in pretrial discovery?


Witnesses certainly can be compelled to testify, at trial or in deposition. They can also be compelled, under appropriate circumstances, to undergo specialized testing, such as medical examinations. (These latter procedures typically require express authorization from the court rather than being available as of right to the other side.) Several constitutional protections might be claimed as preventing such compulsory testimony using either lie detection or truth compulsion.
A witness might argue that the method of truth testing involved was so great an intrusion into the person's bodily (or mental) integrity as to "shock the conscience" and violate the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment, as did the stomach pumping in Rochin v. California.37 A test method involving something like the wearing of headphones might seem quite different from one involving an intravenous infusion of a drug or envelopment in the coffin-like confines of a full-sized MRI machine. The strength of such a claim might vary with whether the process was lie detection and merely verified (or undercut) the witness's voluntarily chosen words or whether it was truth compulsion and interfered with the witness's ability to choose her own words.


The Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination would usually protect those who choose to invoke it (and who had not been granted immunity). As noted above, that would not necessarily protect either a party in a civil case or a non-defendant witness in a criminal case from impeachment for invoking the privilege.
Would a witness have a possible Fourth Amendment claim that such testing, compelled by court order, was an unreasonable search and seizure by the government? I know of no precedent for considering questioning itself as a search or seizure, but this form of questioning could be seen as close to searching the confines of the witness's mind. In that case, would a search warrant or other court order suffice to authorize the test against a Fourth Amendment claim? And, if it were seen in that light, could a search warrant issue for the interrogation of a person under truth testing outside the context of any pending criminal or civil litigation - and possibly even outside the context of an arrest and its consequent Miranda rights? If this seems implausible, consider what an attractive addition statutory authorization of such "mental searches" might seem to the Administration or the Congress in the next version of the USA PATRIOT Act.38


In some circumstances, First Amendment claims might be plausible. Truth compulsion might be held to violate in some respects the right not to speak, although the precedents on this point are quite distant, involving a right not to be forced to say, or to publish, specific statements. It also seems conceivable that some religious groups could object to these practices and might be able to make a free exercise clause argument against such compelled speech.
These constitutional questions are many and knotty. Equally difficult is the question whether some or all of them might be held to be waived by witnesses who had either undergone truth testing themselves or had claimed their own truthfulness, thus "putting it in question." And, of course, even if parties or witnesses have no constitutional rights against being ordered to undergo truth testing, that does not resolve the policy issue of whether such rights should exist as a matter of statute, rule, or judicial decision.


Parties and witnesses are not the only relevant actors in trials. Truth testing might also be used in voir dire. Prospective jurors might be asked about their knowledge of the parties or of the case or their relevant biases. Could a defendant claim that his right to an unbiased juror was infringed if such methods were not used and hence compel prospective jurors to undergo truth testing? Could one side or the other challenge for cause a prospective juror who was unwilling to undergo such testing? In capital cases, jurors are asked whether they could vote to convict in light of a possible death penalty; truth testing might be demanded by the prosecution to make sure the prospective jurors are being honest.
It is also worth considering how the existence of such methods might change the pretrial maneuvers of the parties. Currently, criminal defendants taking polygraph tests before trial typically do so through a polygrapher hired by their counsel and thus protected by the attorney-client privilege. Whatever rules are adopted concerning the admissibility of evidence from truth testing will undoubtedly affect the incentives of the parties, in civil and criminal cases, to undergo truth testing. This may, in turn, have substantial, and perhaps unexpected, repercussions for the practices of criminal plea bargaining and civil settlement. As the vast majority of criminal and civil cases are resolved before trial, the effects of truth testing could be substantial.


Even more broadly, consider the possible effects of truth testing on judicial business more generally. Certainly not every case depends on the honesty of witness testimony. Some hinge on conclusions about reasonableness or negligence; others are determined by questions of law. Even factual questions might be the focus of subjectively honest, but nevertheless contradictory, testimony from different witnesses. Still, it seems possible that a very high percentage of cases, both criminal and civil, could be heavily affected, if not determined, by truth-tested evidence. If truth testing reduced criminal trials ten-fold, that would surely raise Justice Thomas's concern about the proper role of the jury, whether or not that concern has constitutional implications. It would also have major effects on the workload of the judiciary and, perhaps, on the structure of the courts.
The questions raised by a perfect method of truth testing are numerous and complicated. They are also probably unrealistic given that no test will be perfect. Most of these questions would require reconsideration if truth testing turned out to be only 99.9% accurate, or 99% accurate, or 90% accurate. That reconsideration would have to consider not just overall "accuracy" but the rates of both false positives (the identification of a false statement as true) and false negatives (the identification of a true statement as false), as those may have different implications. Similarly, decisions on admissibility might differ if accuracy rates varied with a witness's age, sex, training in "beating" the machine, or other traits. And, of course, proving the accuracy of such methods as they are first introduced or as they are altered will be a major issue in court systems under the Daubert or Frye tests.


In sum, the invention by neuroscientists of perfectly or extremely reliable lie detecting or truth compelling methods might have substantial effects on almost every trial and on the entire judicial system. How those effects would play out in light of our current criminal justice system, including the constitutional protections of the Bill of Rights, is not obvious.


Determining Bias


Evidence produced by neuroscience may play other significant roles in the courtroom. Consider the possibility of testing, through neuroimaging, whether a witness or a juror reacts negatively to particular groups. Already, neuroimaging work is going on that looks for — and finds — differences in a subject's brain's reaction to people of different races. If that research is able to associate certain patterns of activity with negative bias, its possible use in litigation could be widespread.
As with truth testing, courts would have to decide whether bias testing met Daubert or Frye, whether voluntary test results would be admissible, whether a party's or witness's refusal or agreement to take the test could be admitted into evidence, and whether the testing could ever be compelled. The analysis on these points seems similar to that for truth testing, with the possible exception of a lesser role for the privilege against self-incrimination.
If allowed, neuroscience testing for racial bias might be used where bias was a relevant fact in the case, as in claims of employment discrimination based on race. It might be used to test any witness for bias for or against a party of a particular race. It might be used to test jurors to ensure that they were not biased against the parties because of their race. One could even, barely, imagine it being used to test judges for bias, perhaps as part of a motion to disqualify for bias. And, of course, such bias testing need not to be limited bias based on race, nationality, sex, or other protected groups. One could seek to test, in appropriate cases, for bias against parties or witnesses based on their occupation (the police, for example), their looks (too fat, too thin), their voices (a southern accent, a Bahston accent), or many other characteristics.
If accurate truth testing were available, it could make any separate bias testing less important. Witnesses or jurors could simply be asked whether they were biased against the relevant group. On the other hand, it is possible that people might be able to answer honestly that they were not biased, when they were in fact biased. Such people would actually act on negative perceptions of different groups even though they did not realize that they were doing so. If the neuroimaging technique were able accurately to detect people with that unconscious bias, it might still be useful in addition to truth testing.
Bias testing might even force us to re-evaluate some truisms. We say that the parties to litigation are entitled to unbiased judges and juries, but we mean that they are entitled to judges and juries that are not demonstrably biased in a context where demonstrating bias is difficult. What if demonstrating bias becomes easy — and bias is ubiquitous? Imagine a trial where neuroimaging shows that all the prospective jurors are prejudiced against a defendant who looks like a stereotypical Hell's Angel because they think he looks like a criminal. Or what if the only potential jurors who didn't show bias were themselves members of quasi-criminal motorcycle gangs? What would his right to a fair trial mean in that context?


Evaluating or Eliciting Memory


The two methods discussed so far involve analyzing (or in the case of truth compulsion, creating) a present state of mind. It is conceivable that neuroscience might also provide courts with at least three relevant tools concerning memory. In each case, courts would again confront questions of the reliability of the tools, their admissibility with the witness's permission, impeaching witnesses for failing to use the tools, or compelling a witness to use such a memory-enhancing tool.


The first tool might be an intervention, pharmacological or otherwise, that improved a witness's ability to remember events. It is certainly conceivable that researchers studying memory-linked diseases might create drugs that help people retrieve old memories or retrieve them in more detail. This kind of intervention would not be new in litigation. The courts have seen great controversy over the past few years over "repressed" or "recovered" memories, typically traumatic early childhood experiences brought back to adult witnesses by therapy or hypnosis. Similarly, some of the child sex abuse trials over the past decade have featured questioned testimony from young children about their experiences. In both cases, the validity of these memories has been questioned. We do know from research that people often will come to remember, in good faith, things that did not happen, particularly when those memories have been suggested to them.39 Similar problems might arise with "enhanced" memories.40


A second tool might be the power to assess the validity of a witness's memory. What if neuroscience could give us tools to distinguish between "true" and "false" memory? One could imagine different parts of a witness's brain being used while recounting a "true" memory, a "false" memory, or a creative fiction. Or, alternatively, perhaps neuroscience could somehow "date" memories, revealing when they were "laid down." These methods seem more speculative than either truth testing or bias testing, but, if either one (or some other method of testing memory) turned out to be feasible, courts would, after the Daubert or Frye hearings, again face questions of admitting testimony concerning their voluntary use, allowing comment on a witness's refusal to take the test, and possibly compelling their use.


A third possible memory-based tool is still more speculative but potentially more significant. There have long been reports that electrical stimulation can, sometimes, trigger a subject to have what appears to be an extremely detailed and vivid memory of a past scene, almost like reliving the experience. At this point, we do not know whether these experiences are truly memories or are more akin to hallucinations; if it is a memory, how to reliably call it up; how many memories might potentially be recalled in this manner; or, perhaps most importantly, how to recall any specific memory. Whatever filing system the brain uses for memories seems to be, at this point, a mystery. Assume that it proves possible to cause a witness to recall a specific memory in its entirety, perhaps by localizing the site of the memory first through neuroimaging the witness while she calls up her own existing memories of the event. A witness could then, perhaps, relive an event important to trial, either before trial or on the witness stand. One could even, just barely, imagine a technology that might be able to "read out" the witness's memories, intercepted as neuronal firings, and translate it directly into voice, text, or the equivalent of a movie for review by the finder of fact. Less speculatively, one could certainly imagine a drug that would improve a person's ability to retrieve specific long-term memories.
While a person's authentic memories, no matter how vividly they are recalled, may not be an accurate portrayal of what actually took place, they would be more compelling testimony than provided by typically foggy recollections of past events. Once again, if the validity of these methods were established, the key questions would seem to be whether to allow the admission of evidence from such a recall experience, voluntarily undertaken; whether to admit the fact of a party's or witness's refusal or agreement to use such method; and whether, under any circumstances, to compel the use of such a technique.41


Other Litigation-Related Uses


Neuroscience covers a wide range of brain-related activities. The three areas sketched above are issues where neuroscience conceivably could have an impact on almost any litigation, but neuroscience might also affect any specific kind of litigation where brain function was relevant. Consider four examples.
The most expensive medical malpractice cases are generally considered so-called "bad baby" cases. In these cases, children are born with profound brain damage. Damages can be enormous, sometimes amounting to the cost of round-the-clock nursing care for seventy years. Evidence of causation, however, is often very unclear. The plaintiff parents will allege that the defendants managed the delivery negligently, which led to a lack of oxygen that in turn caused the brain damage. Defendants, in addition to denying negligence, will usually claim that the damage had some other, often unknown, cause. Jurors are left with a family facing a catastrophic situation and no strong evidence about what caused it. Trial verdicts, and settlements, can be extremely high, accounting in part for the high price of malpractice insurance for obstetricians. If neuroscience would reliably distinguish between brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation near birth and that caused earlier, these cases would have more accurate results, in terms of compensating only families where the damage was caused around delivery. Similarly, if fetal neuroimaging could reveal serious brain damage before labor, those images could be evidence about the cause of the damage. (One can even imagine obstetricians insisting on prenatal brain scans before delivery in order to establish a baseline.) By making the determination of causation more certain, it should also lead to more settlements and less wasteful litigation. (Of course, in cases where neuroscience showed that the damage was consistent with lack of oxygen around delivery, the defendants' negligence would still be in question.)
In many personal injury cases, the existence of intractable pain may be an issue. In some of those cases there may be a question whether the plaintiff is exaggerating the extent of the pain. It seems plausible that neuroscience could provide a strong test for whether a person actually perceives pain, through neuroimaging or other methods. It might be able to show whether signals were being sent by the sensory nerves to the brain from the painful location on the plaintiff's body. Alternatively, it might locate a region of the brain that is always activated when a person feels pain or a pattern of brain activation that is always found during physically painful experiences. Again, by reducing uncertainty about a very subjective (and hence falsifiable) aspect of a case, neuroscience could improve the litigation system.


A person's competency is relevant in several legal settings, including disputed guardianships and competency to stand trial. Neuroscience might be able to establish some more objective measures that could be considered relevant to competency. (It might also reveal that what the law seems pleased to regard as a general, undifferentiated competency does not, in fact, exist.) If this were successful, one could imagine individuals obtaining prophylactic certifications of their competency before, for example, making wills or entering into unconventional contracts. The degree of mental ability is also relevant in capital punishment, where the Supreme Court has recently held that executing the mentally retarded violates the Eighth Amendment.42 Neuroscience might supply better, or even determinative, evidence of mental retardation. Or, again, it may be that neuroscience would force the courts to recognize that "mental retardation" is not a discrete condition.
Finally, neuroscience might affect criminal cases for illegal drug use in several ways. Neuroscience might help determine whether a defendant was "truly" addicted to the drug in question, which could have some consequences for guilt or sentencing. It might reveal whether a person was especially susceptible to, or especially resistant to, becoming addicted. Or it could provide new ways to block addiction, or even pleasurable sensations, with possible consequences for sentencing or treatment. Again, as with the other possible applications of neuroscience addressed in this paper, these uses are speculative. It would be wrong to count on neuroscience to solve, deus ex machina, our drug problems. It does not seem irresponsible, however, to consider the possible implications of neuroscience breakthroughs in this area.43


III. CONFIDENTIALITY AND PRIVACY

I am using these two often conflated terms to mean different things. I am using "confidentiality" to refer to the obligation of a professional or an entity to limit appropriately the availability of information about people (in this context, usually patients or research subjects). "Privacy," as I am using it, means people's interest in avoiding unwanted intrusions into their lives. The first focuses on limiting the distribution of information appropriately gathered; the second concerns avoiding intrusions, including the inappropriate gathering of information. Neuroscience will raise challenges concerning both concepts.


Maintaining —and Breaking — Confidentiality


Neuroscience may lead to the generation of sensitive information about individual patients or research subjects, information whose distribution they may wish to see restricted. Personal health information is everywhere protected in the United States, by varying theories under state law, by new federal privacy regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA),44 and by codes of professional ethics. Personal information about research subjects must also be appropriately protected under the Common Rule, the federal regulation governing most (but not all) biomedical research in the United States.45 The special issue with neuroscience-derived information is whether some or all of it requires additional protection.

Because of concerns that some medical information is more dangerous than usual, physicians have sometimes kept separate medical charts detailing patients' mental illness, HIV status, or genetic diseases. Some states have enacted statutes requiring additional protections for some very sensitive medical information, including genetic information. Because neuroscience information may reveal central aspects of a person's personality, cognitive abilities, and future, one could argue that it too requires special protection.
Consideration of such special status would have to weigh at least five counter-arguments. First, any additional recordkeeping or data protection requirements both increase costs and risk making important information unavailable to physicians or patients who need it. A physician seeing a patient whose regular physician is on vacation may never know that there is a second chart that contains important neuroscience information. Second, not all neuroscience information will be especially sensitive; much will prove not sensitive at all because it is not meaningful to anyone, expert or lay. Third, defining "neuroscience information" will prove difficult. Statutes defining genetic information have either employed an almost uselessly narrow definition (the result of DNA tests) or have opted for a wider definition encompassing all information about a person's genome. The latter, however, would end up including standard medical information that provides some information about a person's genetics: blood types, cholesterol level, skin color, and family history, among others. Fourth, mandating special protection for a class of information sends the message that the information is especially important even if it is not. In genetics, it is argued that legislation based on such "genetic exceptionalism" increases a false and harmful public sense of "genetic determinism." Similar arguments might apply to neuroscience. Finally, given the many legitimate and often unpredictable needs for access to medical information, confidentiality provisions will often prove ineffective at keeping neuroscience information private, especially from the health insurers and employers who are paying for the medical care. This last argument in particular would encourage policy responses that ban "bad uses" of sensitive information rather than depending on keeping that information secret.


Laws and policies on confidentiality also need to consider the limits on confidentiality. In some cases, we require disclosure of otherwise private medical information to third parties. Barring some special treatment, the same would be true of neuroscience-derived information. A physician (including, perhaps, a physician-researcher) may have an obligation to report to a county health agency or the Centers for Disease Control neuroscience-derived information about a patient that is linked to a reportable disease (an MRI scan showing, for example, a case of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human version of "mad cow disease"); to a motor vehicle department information linked to loss-of-consciousness disorders; and to a variety of governmental bodies information leading to a suspicion of child abuse, elder abuse, pesticide poisoning, or other topics as specified by statute. In some cases, it might be argued, as it has been in genetics, that a physician has a responsibility to disclose a patient's condition to a family member if the family member is at higher risk of the same condition as a result. Finally, neuroscience information showing an imminent and serious threat from a patient to a third party might have to be reported under the Tarasoff doctrine.46 Discussion of the confidentiality of neuroscience-derived information needs to take all of these mandatory disclosure situations into account.


Privacy Protections Against Mental Intrusions


Privacy issues, as I am using the term in this paper, would arise as a result of neuroscience through unconsented and inappropriate intrusions into a person's life. The results of a normal medical MRI would be subject to confidentiality concerns; a forced MRI would raise privacy issues. Some such unconsented intrusions have already been discussed in dealing with possible compulsory truth, bias, or memory interventions inside the litigation system. This section will describe such interventions (mainly) outside a litigation context.
Intrusions by the government are subject to the Constitution and its protections of privacy, contained in and emanating from the penumbra of the Bill of Rights. Whether or not interventions were permitted in the courtroom, under judicial supervision, the government might use them in other contexts, just as polygraphs are used in security clearance investigations. All of these non-litigation governmental uses share a greater possibility of abuse than the use of such a technology in a court-supervised setting.
Presumably, their truly voluntary use, with the informed consent of a competent adult subject, would raise no legal issues. Situations where agreement to take the test could be viewed as less than wholly voluntary would raise their own set of sticky problems about the degree of coercion. Consider the possibility of truth tests for those seeking government jobs, benefits, or licenses. Admission to a state college (or eligibility for government-provided scholarships or government-guaranteed loans) might, for example, be conditioned on passing a lie detection examination on illegal drug use.


Frankly compelled uses might also be used, although they would raise constitutional questions under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. One could imagine law enforcement officials deciding to interrogate one member of a criminal gang under truth compulsion in violation of Miranda and of the Fifth Amendment (and hence to forego bringing him to trial) in order to get information about his colleagues. Even if a person had been given a sufficiently broad grant of immunity to avoid any Fifth Amendment issues, would that really protect the interests of a person forced to undergo a truth compulsion process? Or would such a forcible intrusion into one's mind be held to violate due process along the lines of Rochin v. California?47
Of course, even if the interrogated party could bring a constitutional tort claim against the police, how often would such a claim be brought? And would we — or our courts — always find such interrogations improper? Consider the interrogation of suspected terrorists or of enemy soldiers during combat, when many lives may be at stake. (This also raises the interesting question of how the U.S. could protect its soldiers or agents from similar questioning).
Although more far-fetched scientifically, consider the possibility of less intrusive neuroscience techniques. What if the government developed a neuroimaging device that could be used at a distance from a moving subject or one that could fit into the arch of a airport metal detector? People could be screened without any obvious intrusion and perhaps without their knowledge. Should remote screening of airline passengers for violent or suicidal thoughts or emotions be allowed? Would it matter whether the airport had signs saying that all travelers, by their presence, consented to such screening?


Private parties have less ability than the government to compel someone to undergo a neuroscience intervention - at least without being liable to arrest for assault. Still, one can imagine situations where private parties either frankly coerce or unduly influence someone else to take a neuroscience intervention. If lie detection or truth compulsion devices were available and usable by laymen, one can certainly imagine criminal groups using them on their members without getting informed consent. Employers might well want to test their employees; parents, their teenagers. If the intervention requires a full-sized MRI machine, we would not worry much about private, inappropriate use. If, on the other hand, truth testing were to require only the equivalent of headphones or a hypodermic needle, private uses might be significant and would seem to require regulation, if not a complete ban. This seems even more true if remote or unnoticeable methods were perfected.


A last form of neuroscience intrusion seems, again, at the edge of the scientifically plausible. Imagine an intervention that allowed an outsider to control the actions or motions, and possibly even the speech, emotions, or thoughts, of a person. Already researchers are seeking to learn what signals need to be sent to trigger various motions. Dr. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University has been working to determine what neural activity triggers particular motions in rats and in monkeys and he hopes to be able to stimulate it artificially.48 One goal is to trigger the implanted electrodes and have the monkey's arm move in a predictable and controlled fashion. The potential benefits of this research are enormous, particularly to people with spinal cord injuries or other interruptions in their motor neurons. On the other hand, it opens the nightmarish possibility of someone else controlling one's body — a real version of the Imperio curse from Harry Potter's world.

Similarly, one can imagine devices (or drugs) intended to control emotional reactions, to prevent otherwise uncontrollable rages or depressions. One could imagine a court ordering implantation of such a device in sexual offenders to prevent the emotions that give rise to their crimes or, perhaps more plausibly, offering such treatment as an option, in place of a long prison term. Castration, an old-fashioned method of accomplishing a similar result, either surgical or chemical, is already a possibility for convicted sex offenders in some states. Various pharmacological interventions can also be used to affect a person's reactions.

These kinds of interventions may never become more than the ravings of victims of paranoia, though it is at least interesting that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA) is providing $26 million in support of Nicolelis's research through its "Brain-Machine Interfaces" program.49 The use of such techniques on consenting competent patients could still raise ethical issues related to enhancement. Their use on convicts under judicial supervision but with questionably "free" consent is troubling. Their possible use on unconsenting victims is terrifying. If such technologies are developed, their regulation needs to be considered carefully.


IV. PATENTS

Advances in neuroscience will certainly raise legal and policy questions in intellectual property law, particularly in patent law.50 Fortunately, few of those questions seem novel, as most seem likely to parallel issues already raised in genetics. In some important respects, however, the issues seem less likely to be charged than those encountered in genetics.
Two kinds of neuroscience patents seem likely. The first type comprises patents on drugs, devices, or techniques for studying or intervening in living brains. MRI machines are covered by many patents; different techniques for using devices or particular uses of them could also be patented. So, for example, the first person to use an MRI machine to search for a particular atom or molecule might be able to patent that use, unless it were an obvious extension of existing practice. Similarly, someone using an MRI machine, or a drug, for the purpose of determining whether the subject was telling the truth could patent that use of that machine or drug, even if she did not have own a patent on the machine or drug itself.


The second type would be a patent on a particular pattern of activity in the brain. (I will refer to these as "neural pattern patents.") The claims could be that this pattern could be used to diagnose conditions, to predict future conditions, or as an opportunity for an intervention. This would parallel the common approach to patenting genes for diagnosis, for prediction, and for possible gene therapy. Neuroimaging results seem the obvious candidates for this kind of patent, although the patented pattern might show up, for example, as a set of gene expression results revealed by microarrays or gene chips.
I will discuss the likely issues these kinds of patents raise in three categories: standard bioscience patent issues, "owning thoughts," and medical treatments.


Standard Bioscience Patent Issues


Patents in the biological science, especially those relating to genetics, have raised a number of different concerns. Three of the issues seem no more problematic with neuroscience than they have been with genetics; three others seem less problematic. Whether this is troublesome, of course, depends largely on one's assessment of the current state of genetic patents. My own assessment is relatively sanguine; I believe we are muddling through the issues of genetic patents with research and treatment continuing to thrive. I am optimistic, therefore, that none of these standard patent issues will cause broad problems in neuroscience.

Two concerns are based on the fact of the patent monopoly. Some complain that patents allow the patent owner to restrict the use and increase the price of the patented invention, thus depriving some people of its benefits.51 This is, of course, true of all patents and is a core idea behind the patent system: the time-limited monopoly provides the economic returns that encourage inventors to invent. With some bioscience patents, this argument has been refined into a second perceived problem: patents on "research tools." Control over a tool essential to the future of a particular field could, some say, give the patent owner too much power over the field and could end up retarding research progress. This issue has been discussed widely, most notably in the 1998 Report of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Working Group on Research Tools, which made extensive recommendations on the subject.52 Some neuroscience patents may raise concerns about monopolization of basic research tools, but it is not clear that those problems cannot be handled if and as they arise.


A third issue concerns the effects of patents on universities. Under the Bayh-Dole Act, passed in 1980, universities and other non-profit organizations where inventions were made using federal grant or contract funds can claim ownership of the resulting inventions, subject to certain conditions. Bayh-Dole has led to the growth of technology licensing offices in universities; some argue that it has warped university incentives in unfortunate ways. Neuroscience patents might expand the number of favored, money-making departments in universities, but seem unlikely to make a qualitative difference.

Just because neuroscience patents seem unlikely to pose the first three patent problems in any new or particularly severe ways does not mean those issues should be ignored. Individual neuroscience patents might cause substantial problems that call for intervention; the cumulative weight of neuroscience patents when added to other bioscience patents may make systemic reform of one kind or another more pressing. But the outlines of the problems are known.
Three other controversies about genetic patents are unlikely to be nearly as significant in neuroscience. They seem relevant, if at all, to neural pattern patents, not to device or process patents.


Two of the controversies grew out of patents on DNA sequences. In 1998 Rebecca Eisenberg and Michael Heller pointed out "the tragedy of the anti-commons," the concern that having too many different patents for DNA sequences under different ownership could increase transaction costs so greatly as to foreclose useful products or research.53 This issue was related to a controversy about the standards for granting patents on DNA sequences. Researchers were applying for tens of thousands of patents on small stretches of DNA without necessarily knowing what, if anything, the DNA did. Often these were "expressed sequence tags" or "ESTs," stretches of DNA that were known to be in genes and hence to play some role in the body's function because they were found in transcribed form as messenger RNA in cells. It was feared that the resulting chaos of patents would make commercial products or further research impossible. This concern eventually led the Patent and Trademark Office to issue revised guidelines tightening the utility requirement for gene patents.


However strong or weak these concerns may be in genetics, neither issue seems likely to be very important in neuroscience (except of course in neurogenetics). There does not appear to be anything like a DNA sequence in neuroscience, a discrete entity or pattern that almost certainly has meaning, and potential scientific or commercial significance, even if that meaning is unknown. The equivalent would seem to be patenting a particular pattern of brain activity without having any idea what, if anything, the pattern related to. That was plausible in genetics because the sequence could be used as a marker for the still unknown gene; nothing seems equivalent in neuroscience. Similarly, it seems unlikely that hundreds or thousands of different neural patterns, each patented by different entities, would need to be combined into one product or tool for commercial or research purposes.

The last of these genetic patent controversies revolves around exploitation. Some have argued that genetic patents have often stemmed from the alleged inventors' exploitation of individuals or indigenous peoples who provided access to or traditional knowledge about medicinal uses of living things, who had created and maintained various genetically varied strains of crops, or who had actually provided human DNA with which a valuable discovery was made. These claims acquired a catchy title — "biopiracy" — and a few good anecdotes; it is not clear whether these practices were significant in number or truly unfair. Neuroscience should face few if any such claims. The main patterns of the research will not involve seeking genetic variations from crops or other living things, nor does it seem likely (apart from neurogenetics) that searches for patterns found in unique individuals or distinct human populations will be common.


"Owning Thoughts"


Patents on human genes have been extremely controversial for a wide variety of reasons. Some have opposed them for religious reasons, others because they were thought not to involve true "inventions," others because they believed human genes should be "the common heritage of mankind," and still others because they believe such gene patents "commodify" humans. (Similar but slightly different arguments have raged over the patentability of other kinds of human biological materials or of non-human life-forms.) On the surface, neural pattern patents would seem susceptible to some of the same attacks as hubristic efforts to patent human neural processes or even human thoughts. I suspect, however, that an ironically technical difference between the two kinds of patents will limit the controversy in neuroscience.


Patents on human genes — or, more accurately, patents on DNA or RNA molecules of specified nucleotide sequences — are typically written to claim a wide range of conceivable use of those sequences. A gene patent, for example, might claim the use of a sequence to predict, to diagnose, or to treat a disease. But it will also claim the molecule itself as a "composition of matter." The composition of matter claim gives the owner rights over any other uses of the sequence even though he has not foreseen them. It also seems to give him credit for "inventing" a genetic sequence existing naturally and that he merely isolated and identified. It is the composition of matter claims that have driven the controversy over gene patents. Few opponents claim that the researchers who, for example, discovered the gene linked to cystic fibrosis should not be able to patent beneficial uses of that gene, such as diagnosis or treatment. It is the assertion of ownership of the thing itself that rankles even though that claim may add little value to the other "use" claims.


Neural pattern patents would differ from gene patents in that there is no composition of matter to be patented. The claim would be to certain patterns used for certain purposes. The pattern itself is not material — it is not a structure or a molecule — and so should not be claimable as a "composition of matter." Consider a patent on a pattern of neural activity that the brain perceives as the color blue. A researcher might patent the use of the pattern to tell if someone was seeing blue or perhaps to allow a person whose retina did not perceive blue to "see" blue. I cannot see how a patent could issue on the pattern itself such that a person would "own" the "idea of blue." Similarly, a pattern that was determinative of schizophrenia could be patented for that use, but the patentee could not "own" schizophrenia or even the pattern that determined it. If a researcher created a pattern by altering cells, then he could patent, as a composition of matter, the altered cells, perhaps defined in part by the pattern they created. Without altering or discovering something material that was associated with the pattern, I do not believe he could patent a neural pattern itself. The fact that neural pattern patents will be patents to uses of the patterns, not for the patterns themselves, may well prevent the kinds of controversies that have attended gene patents.


Patents and Medical Treatment


Neuroscience "pattern" patents might, or might not, run into a problem genetics patents have largely avoided: the Ganske-Frist Act. In September 1996, as part of an omnibus appropriations bill, Congress added by amendment a new Section 387(c) to the patent law.

This section states that
With respect to a medical practitioner's performance of a medical activity that constitutes an infringement under section 271(a) or (b) of this title, the provisions of sections 281, 283, 284, and 285 of this title shall not apply against the medical practitioner or against a related health care entity with respect to such medical activity.54


This section exempts a physician and her hospital, clinic, HMO, or other "related health care entity" from liability for damages or an injunction for infringing a patent during the performance of a "medical activity." The amendment defines "medical activity" as "the performance of a medical or surgical procedure on a body," but it excludes from that definition "[1] the use of a patented machine, manufacture, or composition of matter in violation of such patent, [2] the practice of a patented use of a composition of matter in violation of such patent, or [3] the practice of a process in violation of a biotechnology patent."55 The statute does not define "a biotechnology patent."


Congress passed the amendment in reaction to an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit brought by an ophthalmologist who claimed that another ophthalmologist infringed his patent on performing eye surgery using a particular "v" shaped incision. Medical procedure patents had been banned in many other countries and had been controversial in the United States for over a century; they had, however, clearly been allowed in the United States since 1954.56
Consider a neural pattern patent that claimed the use of a particular pattern of brain activity in the diagnosis or as a guide to the treatment of schizophrenia.57 A physician using that pattern without permission would not be using "a patented machine, manufacture, or composition of matter in violation of such patent." Nor would she be engaged in "the practice of a patented use of a composition of matter in violation of such patent." With no statutory definition, relevant legislative history, or judicial interpretation, it seems impossible to tell whether she would be engaged in the "practice of a process in violation of a biotechnology patent." Because molecules, including DNA, RNA, and proteins, can be the subjects of "composition of matter patents," most genetic patents should not be affected by the Ganske-Frist Act.58 Neural pattern patents might be. It is, of course, quite unclear how significant an influence this exception for patent liability might have in neuroscience research or related medical practice.


CONCLUSION

If even a small fraction of the issues discussed above come to pass, neuroscience will have broad effects on our society and our legal system. The project to which this paper contributes can help in beginning to sift out the likely from the merely plausible, the unlikely, and the bizarre, both in the expected development of the science and in the social and legal consequences of that science. Truly effective prediction of upcoming problems — and suggestions for viable solutions — will require an extensive continuing effort. How to create a useful process for managing the social and legal challenges of neuroscience is not the least important of the many questions raised by neuroscience.

If you are taking a first world democracy with people as citizens with rights to a third world authoritarian extreme wealth/extreme poverty far-right Libertarian Marxism you must create fear, control with imprisonment, create desperation from long-term unemployment and the need of a job, AND YOU WANT TO CONTROL BEHAVIOR ERGO, 'MENTAL HEALTH' DRUGS.

The current use of mental health PHARMA on lower-class young citizens as we saw in yesterday's articles has two goals.  First, some of these PHARMA are relatively new and they are up to the same tricks of using the general population to monitor what can be done with them.  Bill Gates and his global PHARMA corporations centers his patents around mental health drugs and the research of two decades in the brain and what can be used to change behavior.  The second reason young citizens are used is the movement of that generation into what is this forced labor/free labor structure controlling any resistance with PHARMA. 

As always I remind who will fall into the category of low-income when I remind that Obama and Congressional Wall Street global pols see Asian wage structures when they say they are rebuilding the middle-class----those wage structures are $3 an day for general labor and $10-20 a day for white collar professional labor.  The only people having wealth will be that 2% to the 1% as exists overseas.

EVERYONE INTO THIS GULAG OF PRISON LABOR, REHABILITATION FORCED LABOR, RE-EDUCATION AS CONSTANT JOB TRAINING LIBERTARIAN MARXIST STRUCTURE.

'The provisions of the Patriot Act allow the government to spy upon U.S. citizens and the NDAA allows the government to whisk a citizen away for no reason other than being suspected of terrorism'.

Let's take a look at the laws these several years that are moving the US towards this goal.  CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----far-right 1% Wall Street global corporate pols.  The national news and its mantra of constant threat of terrorist attacks are giving cover for what is the attack on our US Constitutional rights as citizens to due process in any arrest.  The NDAA says the government can now arrest on suspicion of terrorism even American citizens without charge or trial.  At the same time the definition of terrorism has broadened to include many ordinary things including protesting.  Crimes that were indeed crimes like arson can now be handled under terrorism.  In Baltimore the NDAA was behind all those citizens swept up during the protests not guilty of anything and held with no charge for days and then released.

THIS WAS OBAMA'S AND CONGRESSIONAL WALL STREET GLOBAL POLS PASSING OF THE PATRIOT ACT AND NDAA.

'I am writing a story that is against what the politicians in Washington have voted for. Can I be seen as aiding Al-Qaeda because I am attempting to change the views of the public to something that is against government; because there is a gun in my home and we have a well-supplied pantry'?

I don't think even Republican voters believe this PATRIOT'S posing in this law.  We know it will march towards authoritarianism and it will be used indiscriminately leading to fear and subjecting those trapped in this NDAA to forced labor camps.

The National Defense Authorization Act: Our Disappearing Rights and Liberties
01/03/2012 11:21 am ET | Updated Mar 04, 2012

Back in the beginning stages of the War on Terrorism, President Bush enacted the Patriot Act. This allowed the government to spy on citizens, monitoring their activities in order to discern whether or not someone is a terrorist. It brought about changes in law enforcement that allowed agencies to search phones, financial records, etc.
One of the most controversial aspects of the law is authorization of indefinite detention of non-U.S. citizens. Immigrants suspected of being terrorists would be detained without trial until the War on Terrorism finished.
On December 31, 2011, President Obama signed a law known as the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2012 fiscal year, or the H.R. 1540. Congress passes this act every year to monitor the budget for the Department of Defense. However, this year the NDAA bill has passed with new provisions that should have the entire country up with pitchforks.
Normally, this is just an act which details the monetary calls of the Department of Defense which is passed every year. However, the act passed for the 2012 fiscal year changes the bill and can be seen as an extension of the Patriot Act. Now, the indefinite detention has been extended to U.S. citizens as well. If people are spied on and suspected of being terrorists, they may be detained indefinitely without trial.
In a country famous for the belief that one is innocent until proven guilty, this is an upsetting change that is being foisted upon the American people with many unaware of what it means.
The provisions of the Patriot Act allow the government to spy upon U.S. citizens and the NDAA allows the government to whisk a citizen away for no reason other than being suspected of terrorism.
So why has this law been passed when it is very easily seen as unconstitutional? The Fourth Amendment grants liberty from unreasonable seizures, while the Sixth guarantees every U.S. citizen a trial in front of a jury. No matter what supporters of the bill might have said about the provisions being misunderstood, the simple fact is that it is unconstitutional.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has made arguments for this provision, stating that the law would apply for US citizens’ turncoats who have aided Al-Qaeda or other associated organization. He gave a long-winded story of how a U.S. citizen might fly to Pakistan to receive terrorist training, then return home and shoot down fellow citizens a few miles from the airport.

It’s a disgusting show that Graham is pulling. He has made an example of how a single U.S. citizen might become a turncoat and because of that possible risk, the citizen’s right to a trial and jury has been abolished.

Supporter of the NDAA, Representative Tim Griffin stated in the Daily Caller:




Section 1022’s use of the word ‘requirement’ also has been misinterpreted as allowing U.S. citizens to be detained, but this provision does not in any way create this authority. This provision must be read in the context of Section 1022’s purpose, which is reflected in its title and relates solely to ‘military custody of foreign al Qaida terrorists.’ The term “requirement” does not mean that detention of U.S. citizens is optional under this provision.




He merely states that the people have ‘misinterpreted’ the provisions within the bill.

This is a situation in which they are able to detain U.S. citizens, but they won’t because that’s wrong. I will repeat: “They are allowed through the NDAA to detain U.S. citizens, but they won’t because that’s wrong.”

Similar to Griffin’s response, President Obama has released a statement regarding the H.R. 1540
(NDAA):




Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.




President Obama says that his administration will not authorize the indefinite detention of American citizens. Yet Obama also said that he would close Guantanamo Bay. Obama also said he would recall the troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. Obama also said he would end the Bush tax cuts.
It doesn’t matter the reason these promises were not kept. What matters is that they weren’t. Obama says his administration will not authorize the indefinite detention of citizens. But that could change. The interpretation of this bill can change on a dime. These politicians who say there is nothing to fear could quickly change whenever they see fit.
These implications grow larger as we know there is no single accepted definition of terrorism present in the United States. The State Department defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”
Under this definition, the entire United States can be seen as terrorists. The government had planned the operations in Iraq and has resulted in over 100,000 civilian deaths. It can also be said that the U.S. is changing views of terrorism throughout the world... influencing an audience. Terrorism cannot be specifically defined as attacks against the United States; therefore, the United States might have been terrorizing parts of the Middle East.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has stated that there are laws regarding terrorist suspects in America in place by the Department of Justice. Issues such as having an armed weapon or having a food supply lasting at least seven days can be grounds for terrorism.
I look to my well-supplied pantry filled with foods my loving mother had purchased from Costco. I’m not one to count it all, but I’d say it would last my entire family over a week.
My father legally owns a handgun. There’s something about protecting his family that is important to him, so he keeps a gun nearby.
I am writing a story that is against what the politicians in Washington have voted for. Can I be seen as aiding Al-Qaeda because I am attempting to change the views of the public to something that is against government; because there is a gun in my home and we have a well-supplied pantry?
Can I be seen as a terrorist under the definition of terrorism? Yes I can. Will I? I hope not.

___________________________
This is a great article on what will become that flooding of prisons and forced labor camps with political prisoners.  Those not familiar with Kafka's THE TRIAL should read it. 

The Trial (original German title: Der Process,[1] later Der Prozess, Der Proceß and Der Prozeß) is a novel written by Franz Kafka from 1914 to 1915 and published in 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader.

'Section 1021 of the Act, per prevailing critical interpretation, authorizes indefinite military detention of American citizens — a dubious American first. No Habeas Corpus. No right to challenge evidence.
Calling the situation “really quite wretched,” Fein said Obama had taken on “far more dictatorial powers than Richard Nixon.” By stripping citizens of Habeas Corpus rights as well as the ability challenge evidence, NDAA is “the ultimate corruption of due process,” said Fein. He pointed out that the country fought a war against England’s King George III precisely to free itself from such treachery. “Not quite the Nürnberg laws,” said Fein, referring to the Nazi anti-Semitic laws, “but moving there on the installment plan.”'

These are mechanisms to hold people to capture of fear of what they do---who they speak with----where they go because it may be construed as anti-government.  Remember, our government today is not WE THE PEOPLE ---it is WE THE 1% RICH AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS ---and this creates far-right authoritarian fascism.

The NDAA — we are all Josef K nowUS Politics
Peter Voskamp on March 2, 2012

• Ramsey Clark

The terms “Kafka-esque” and “Orwellian” can be tossed about too casually, but if critics are correct, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act renders any American a potential Josef K. in his or her own nightmarish version of “The Trial.” 
Section 1021 of the Act, per prevailing critical interpretation, authorizes indefinite military detention of American citizens — a dubious American first. No Habeas Corpus. No right to challenge evidence. 
These “unconstitutional kidnapping powers,” as Blake Filippi of a Rhode Island Liberty Coalition called them during a “transpartisan” forum held with journalists last week, have spurred a groundswell of local and state effort to roll back this most alarming of power grabs.
At least six municipalities nationwide have adopted resolutions against the Act, and legislation has been introduced in state assemblies across the country to nullify the Act. Virginia’s House of Delegates passed such a measure 96-4 in recent weeks.
The discussion, sponsored by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Demand Progress and Tenth Amendment Center, included speakers and officials from across the political spectrum.
“This is the worst thing I’ve seen in my lifetime,” said social critic and author Naomi Wolf. She described the arrival of NDAA as a kind of liberty-evaporating tipping point, similar to the Nazis suspending the rule of law in 1933.
“That’s the point of no return; nobody’s safe,” Wolf said. Just a few targeted arrests were “all it took to shut down civil society.” Wolf was baffled over why senators like California’s Dianne Feinstein supported the act, when it’s certain Feinstein’s constituents would be appalled. “Who benefits?” she asked.
Wolf was arrested in New York last fall at an Occupy Wall Street protest. She now says that with NDAA on the books she’s not sure it’s safe to stand up for 1st Amendment. “All bets are off,” Wolf said. “There’s no accountability.”
Bruce Fein, a conservative writer and former Justice Department official in the Reagan Administration, was even more strident in his denunciations.
He expressed outrage over the lack of outrage following a recent appearance by Pentagon Counsel Jeh Johnson at Yale Law School. Johnson defended the administration’s assassination of U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, as well as its overall right to take out any American citizen it says is in league with al-Qaeda. 
“Belligerents who also happen to be U.S. citizens do not enjoy immunity where non-citizen belligerents are valid military objectives,” Johnson reportedly said.
Calling the situation “really quite wretched,” Fein said Obama had taken on “far more dictatorial powers than Richard Nixon.” By stripping citizens of Habeas Corpus rights as well as the ability challenge evidence, NDAA is “the ultimate corruption of due process,” said Fein. He pointed out that the country fought a war against England’s King George III precisely to free itself from such treachery. “Not quite the Nürnberg laws,” said Fein, referring to the Nazi anti-Semitic laws, “but moving there on the installment plan.”
Absent a Washington effort to overturn the Act, state and local officials have stepped into the breach.
North Carolina State Senator Ellie Kinnaird (D) said, “This country is really threatened — [the government] now has the power to undo everything we have.”
Washington State Rep. Matt Shea (R), a military veteran and practicing constitutional lawyer, has co-sponsored a bill — HD 2759, the “Preservation of Liberty Act” — declaring the NDAA unconstitutional and forbidding the state’s National Guard to arrest American citizens.
“How come local and state representatives can see it?” Shea asked, but the national Congressional leaders can’t.
The House of Representatives passed the NDAA 283-136, while the Senate approved it by a vote of 93-7.
NDAA defenders say the Act merely affirms the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed in the wake of 9-11, which already granted the president the right to order indefinite detention without trial. Also, say defenders, the extra-constitutional powers would go away once the “war” ends
However, Obama acknowledged reservations about Section 1021 when he quietly signed the NDAA into law on New Years Eve 2011. “The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it. In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists,” Obama wrote.
It is worth quoting another part of the statement at length.
“The authority it describes was included in the 2001 AUMF, as recognized by the Supreme Court and confirmed through lower court decisions since then. Two critical limitations in section 1021 confirm that it solely codifies established authorities. First, under section 1021(d), the bill does not ‘limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.’ Second, under section 1021(e), the bill may not be construed to affect any ‘existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.’ My Administration strongly supported the inclusion of these limitations in order to make clear beyond doubt that the legislation does nothing more than confirm authorities that the Federal courts have recognized as lawful under the 2001 AUMF. Moreover, I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens. Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation. My Administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.”
Still, a pledge to not abuse power does not necessarily bring comfort, since future presidents would be able interpret the law as they wish.
If indefinite detention of U.S. citizens was not intended, then “why not write ‘prohibited’,” asked Peggy Littleton, a Republican County Commissioner for El Paso, Colo.
El Paso County passed a resolution against the NDAA on December 15, 2011, two weeks before Obama signed it into law. El Paso is home to myriad Air Force installations, and Littleton called the outrage at the power to indefinitely detain Americans “non-partisan.” Northhampton, Mass., City Councilor Bill Dwight (D) said, “we are witnessing the death by a thousand cuts to the Bill of Rights.” He said the public is being manipulated by fear, and that every politician’s first oath is to protect the U.S. Constitution, “which is clearly in jeopardy.” His town passed a non-binding resolution against the bill. It was the seventh city nationwide, and the first in Massachusetts, to do so.
In 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court granted Habeas Corpus to Guantanamo Bay inmates via the Boumediene v. Bush case. How does that decision square with NDAA?
Fein said the Boumediene decision was a kind of false dawn, easily circumvented by authorities by either moving an inmate, or by redacting charges to the point where the inmate still wouldn’t know what he was being held for
Fein called it “worse then Caligula,” whose edicts appeared in tiny letters so high upon a wall that citizens could never be certain where they stood vis-à-vis the law.
I spoke to the late Henry King Jr., a former Nuremberg prosecutor, in the immediate aftermath of the Boumediene v. Bush decision. He hailed it as “an affirmation of the principles” laid down at Nuremberg regarding the rule of law.
“We gave the Nuremberg defendants every right in the world,” said King. “We didn’t torture them” and provided a comparatively quick trial.
“We’re the beacon of light for human rights,” King insisted. “You’ve got to have a rule of law.”
King went on to say that his former boss in Nuremberg, lead prosecutor Robert Jackson, would be turning in his grave in response to the various “security” measures adopted in post-9/11 America.
“We ought to wipe out Guantanamo,” King said.
A few weeks ago I found myself standing next to former Attorney General Ramsey Clark in the café car of a train. 
Clark is another fierce champion of the rule of law, to the extent that he has risked the ruination of his reputation in order to defend it. He assisted with Saddam Hussein’s legal defense, and volunteered to provide legal help to both Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic.
I asked Clark what he thought about the NDAA.
The 84-year-old gazed out upon the passing coastline and ruminated. We then entered Baltimore and he pointed to a church. “That’s where they held Philip Berrigan’s funeral service,” Clark said quietly.
Clark had defended Phil Berrigan, a former Catholic priest, who along with his brother the Jesuit priest Dan Berrigan, put his faith to the test through the decades, going to jail for acts of civil disobedience against the Vietnam War.
“The NDAA?” Clark repeated. “An outrage.”

___________________________________________

The thing about ONE WORLD GLOBAL INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONE RULE is one can be pushed into this REHABILATION/RE-EDUCATION-FORCED LABOR status and be sent to any International Economic Zone anywhere in the world. The video below does a good job in making this clear---NDAA has global reach, structures for retention are already built, and this version of NDAA brings US citizens into this realm of indefinite detainment without charge. If we think about this----think about the growing imprisonment and categories being created under forced labor------you see the fear of abuse of these laws many US citizens have.

WE CAN REVERSE THIS EASY PEASY---JUST GET RID OF WALL STREET GLOBAL POLS. WE THE PEOPLE HAVE POWER OF NUMBERS TO DO THIS.



'Regardless of where on this planet you live, and no matter what your nationality, the fact that the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA are still on the books, should disturb you on a fundamental level. If not, give it three minutes.

The National Defense Authorization Act which was passed in 2012 and extended in 2013 and 2014, authorizes the U.S. military to arrest anyone, anywhere on the planet, to deny them access to a lawyer, and to detain them indefinitely without at trial. Furthermore the U.S. government claims the right to do all of this in secret.

The right to a fair trial, is gone, and without the right to a fair trial, you have no rights at all.

Of course some would argue that the NDAA only targets enemies of the United States, as if this somehow would make it ok, but that defense doesn't hold water. (And by the way the NDAA does apply to U.S. citizens.)

It doesn't matter who the law claims to target, and it doesn't matter under what conditions the politicians claim it can be used. If you don't have the right to a lawyer, and you don't get your day in court, and if the government isn't even obligated to disclose the fact that they dragged you from your house in the middle of the night, then who is going to make sure this isn't abused? The soldiers? The politicians? Come on.

The power to make someone disappear without a trial is the power to make up any excuse that's convenient. Evidence is only needed if you have to prove your case in court. That's why we have courts.

The protections codified in the constitution were put there for a reason, but at this point it looks very much as if America is going to learn that lesson the hard way.

Land of the free right?

You can put your hand over your heart and celebrate something that no longer exists, or you can be honest with yourself.

That might be a bit painful. No one wants to believe that their kids are going to live under a military dictatorship. No one wants to see this coming. So most people put their head in the sand.

Those who don't, always start with one question: What can we do?

The first thing you need to understand here is that our problem is psychological not material. You have the means to take your power. And you don't need a set of specific instructions. You don't need someone to hold your hand and explain your role. You don't need someone to give you permission. What you need, is to turn off your tv, turn off your radio, put down the ipad, and ask yourself if you're going to be able to look your grandchildren in the eyes and tell them honestly that you did everything in your power to turn this around.

Are you going to push this out of your mind because it's uncomfortable, or are you going convert that discomfort into a driving force?

I'll tell you this much: If that thought itches in the minds of enough people we'll figure out a way to scratch it, and If that driven feeling is fully established in your heart, you'll find a way to make it spread.

P.S. If you want a practical starting point to take action on the NDAA get in contact with the guys at People Against the NDAA. Dan Johnson (the founder) is one of those driven people who are making a difference'.

___________________________________________

IF REPUBLICAN VOTERS WOULD STOP ALLOWING THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE THE POWER OF POLITICS WE WOULD NOT CONSTANTLY END HAVING TO DEAL WITH THESE FASCISMS.

I wanted to include a right-wing view of NDAA as the above were left-leaning.  The reason I like this one is he ties the idea of controlling food as leading to these camps.  One thing I shout against in Baltimore is the growing FEED THE CITY-----in all US cities where they are deliberately creating massive unemployment and deepening poverty and then growing the funding from global hedge funds to feed US citizens as if they were in a refugee camp.  People tied to FEED THE CITY are grassroots trying to help the poor but the structure is very, very, very, very bad and will indeed lead to citizens pushed into these forced labor camps.  Ending FOOD STAMPS at the same time of bringing on a great recession/depression with this coming economic crash from bond market fraud----will super-size this FEED THE CITY structure.

Here we have the right-wing thinking the same as the left and try as they might to blame this on the Democratic Party because Obama is pushing this-----

ALL OF THIS IS FAR-RIGHT 1% WALL STREET LIBERTARIAN SOON TO BE MARXISM.

Enslavement Will Be the Prime Directive

The purpose of the coming martial law is twofold: (1) Eliminate all opposition to the authoritarian rule which has taken over our government; and, (2) Use forced labor (i.e. slavery) to martial the resources for the coming world war.

Controlling the Flow of Food Will Bring Most to the Camps

'Instead, the American people are the new targets for these novel starvation policies. Americans will be the new third world and your food will be withheld in order to enforce compliance with the planned slave labor in support of the WW III production needs'.


Slave Labor Camps Are Awaiting
Dave Hodges
March 13, 2014
The Common Sense Show


Following the coming false flag, how will the powers that be get the country to fall into line and willingly participate in their demise as we race towards World War III. It is important to note that the people must be brought to their knees by denying food and through unconstitutional incarcerations as provided for under the NDAA and EO 13603.
The powers that be have no choice, as most Americans will not willingly go along with what is coming. In the previous parts of this series, the forces of WW III have aligned and are positioning for WW III. Your incarceration and subsequent use of your slave labor, under a declaration of martial law, is next.


Martial Law Has Been In Effect Since January 31, 2011

The day that Congress passed the NDAA and Obama signed it into law,on January 11, 2011, this illegitimate government declared war on the American people. If you have been living in a fog, the NDAA allows the government to secretly arrest and even murder you.  You don’t believe it, click here, right now. No, do not read the next sentence until you have clicked and read this link, or this link. Do I now have you attention? 


The Insider’s Insider Tells Us What Is Coming


Brzezinski ?Easier to kill a million …”
Zbigniew Brzezinski is an insider’s insider. He and David Rockefeller co-founded the Trilateral Commission. He served as Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser. He may as well have been called Mr. President during the Carter years because he ran the US economy into the ground while undermining American sovereignty during the Carter administration. Many suspect that he also controls Obama. He was, after all, Obama’s Russian Studies professor at Columbia back in the 1980′s. We know that he handpicked Jimmy Carter to become the President and many suspect he had a large hand in grooming Obama for the same job. Brzezinski’s close affiliation with Rockefeller makes him a person of interest when it comes to the subjugation, of not only this country, but of the entire planet. Brzezinski is obviously the globalist’s man on the ground and serves the role as puppet master.  
Brzezinski expressed even more of a sense of globalist dread and panic during a 2010 Council on Foreign Relations speech in Montreal in which he stated that  “the major world powers, new and old, also face a novel reality: while the lethality of their military might is greater than ever, their capacity to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is at a historic low. To put it bluntly: in earlier times, it was easier to control one million people than to physically kill one million people; today, it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people,” he said.
There can be no other reasonable interpretation, that this is a direct threat against all who oppose being enslaved and eventually exterminated.


Enslavement Will Be the Prime Directive

The purpose of the coming martial law is twofold: (1) Eliminate all opposition to the authoritarian rule which has taken over our government; and, (2) Use forced labor (i.e. slavery) to martial the resources for the coming world war.
Recently, a document entitled FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations (PDF) came to light. The document was originally to be kept secret, but everyone in the military command structure, as we know, is not on board with the encroaching tyranny sweeping across this country. The document is a recipe book on how to organize and maintain a FEMA camp. I would suggest that all Americans turn off the TV for an evening and read the document which spells out what life will be like for millions of Americans. The language makes it crystal clear that one of the primary purposes of these numerous camps will be slave labor. The stunning descriptions of these plans can be read here. What happens to the elderly, the handicapped and the infirm? History clearly demonstrates that when slave laborers no longer serve their intended purpose to the state, they are exterminated. Is this what these well publicized FEMA coffins are for?


How Will You End Up In the Camps

There can be no question that Executive Order (EO) 13603 will create artificial famine scenarios which will bring millions to the camps in search of food and protection from rampaging hordes in search of food.
You would be well advised to read EO 13603 from cover to cover if you want to know what is coming. Researchers used to be able to click on a link which took one to Whitehouse.gov and the provisions of EO 13603  were clearly elucidated. However, the federal government has made obtaining the same information a little more difficult. Today, if you want to read about the provisions of EO 13603, you must first click on the Federal Register and then scroll down and locate EO 13603 and then click on that particular hypertext link which takes you to a PDF.  Relevant parts will be listed in the Appendix of this article.


Controlling the Flow of Food Will Bring Most to the Camps


Stopping the transport of food to your local supermarket has already been accounted for in EO 13603. Please examine the following provision of  EO 13603 in Part VII, Section 801 which allows the President, in a time of self-declared emergency, to seize control of ALL transportation by stopping the transport of food to any and all selected areas.
All of the following references to EO 13603 are verbatim copy and paste of the referenced PDF file entitled, Executive Order 13603.


PART VIII—GENERAL PROVISIONS
Sec. 801. Definitions. In addition to the definitions in section 702 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2152, the following definitions apply throughout this order:
(a) ‘‘Civil transportation’’ includes movement of persons and property by all modes of transportation in interstate, intrastate, or foreign commerce within the United States, its territories and possessions, and the District of Columbia, and related public storage and warehousing, ports, services, equipment and facilities, such as transportation carrier shop and repair facilities. ‘‘Civil transportation’’ also shall include direction, control, and coordination of civil transportation capacity regardless of ownership. ‘‘Civil transportation’’ shall not include transportation owned or controlled by the Department of Defense, use of petroleum and gas pipelines, and coal slurry and pipelines used only to supply energy production facilities directly.
 
Most Americans eat a 1400 mile salad. We are totally dependent upon the shipment of food to eat. When the transportation of food is controlled, so is the distribution of food. Subsequently, Obama has given himself the authority to control all transportation in an emergency and he now has the authority to create food shortages in America because he is the sole judge of what constitutes an emergency.
Third world population control, using food as one of the primary weapons, has long been a matter of official covert US national policy and a portion of President Obama’s Executive Order (EO 13603) is a continuation of that policy. Only now, the intended targets are not the Lesser Developed Countries. Instead, the American people are the new targets for these novel starvation policies. Americans will be the new third world and your food will be withheld in order to enforce compliance with the planned slave labor in support of the WW III production needs.
According to EO 13603, the President, or the head of any federal agency that he shall designate, can conscript “persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation,” in both “peacetime and times of national emergency.”  I can hear the Obama supporters now as they will write to me and say, “Obama would never do that, you are drinking from the Kool-Aid”.  Well, here it is, you can read it for yourself.


Sec. 502.  Consultants.  The head of each agency otherwise delegated functions under this order is delegated the authority of the President under sections 710(b) and (c) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(b), (c), to employ persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation and to employ experts, consultants, or organizations.  The authority delegated by this section may not be redelegated.


This means that Obama, and his fellow communists, can seize any resource, property, or person at any time for any reason, including being able to force that person to perform assigned labor without being paid.
There is only ONE word for forced, “uncompensated employment”. That word is slavery. Congratulations President Obama, you have effectively repealed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.


Section 601 of the act specifies, in part, how far the government can go in terms of making you their slave.
Sec. 601. Secretary of Labor. (a) The Secretary of Labor, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of other agencies, as deemed appropriate by the Secretary of Labor, shall:
(1) collect and maintain data necessary to make a continuing appraisal of the Nation’s workforce needs for purposes of national defense;
(2) upon request by the Director of Selective Service, and in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, assist the Director of Selective Service in development of policies regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services;
(3) upon request from the head of an agency with authority under this order, consult with that agency with respect to: (i) the effect of contemplated actions on labor demand and utilization; (ii) the relation of labor demand to materials and facilities requirements; and (iii) such other matters as will assist in making the exercise of priority and allocations functions consistent with effective utilization and distribution of labor;
(4) upon request from the head of an agency with authority under this order: (i) formulate plans, programs, and policies for meeting the labor requirements of actions to be taken for national defense purposes; and
(ii) estimate training needs to help address national defense requirements and promote necessary and appropriate training programs.
 
This is an enslavement document. If you are not convinced, please allow me to encourage you to read this again. If the above section was merely going to be a military draft, then the Secretary of Labor would not have to be involved. However, as you will note the “Secretary of Labor, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and heads of other agencies, as deemed appropriate by the Secretary of Labor, shall: …assist in the development of policies regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services;… formulate plans, programs, and policies for meeting the labor requirements of actions to be taken for national defense purposes; and (ii) estimate training needs to help address national defense requirements and promote necessary and appropriate training programs…”.  Refer back to section 502 of sections 710(b) and (c) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(b), (c);  these are the people that the Secretary of the Labor will conscript in order “to employ persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation and to employ experts, consultants, or organizations”.
This, my fellow Americans, is a civilian conscription and this is why the Secretary of Labor is in charge instead of the head of the Selective Service! Under these provisions, the government believes that they can send you anywhere, to work on anything of their choosing.


 Conclusion

For more in-depth coverage, I have included a sample of government documents which more than validates the claims made in this article. If you have any doubts as to the veracity of these claims, I would suggest setting aside some time this weekend to read about your future. Given the scope of these programs which are backed by massive legislation, I think it is likely that we could see as many as 50, 75 or even 100 million Americans in a camp of some sort in forced servitude to the coming war efforts.

Food will not be on the only means that people are drawn into the camps. There are many secondary programs which have already been beta tested by this administration. That and also how you might best resist and survive will be the topic of the next part in this series.

_________________________________________

Manning and Snowden were the most well-known political prisons until we watched more and more follow.  Authoritarian far-right 1% Wall Street Libertarianism does not like the idea that they are accountable to laws as are everyone in RULE OF LAW DEMOCRATIC NATIONS LIKE THE US.  When fascism sets in we see them above the law and now it becomes criminal to whistle-blow criminality in government and corporations.  Both Manning and Snowden felt forced to release information because they were watching this totalitarianism grow and grow and as people not void OF MORALS, ETHICS, RULE OF LAW far-right 1% Wall STreet Libertarians---they did what all honest people do---they hold power accountable.

Many good people have been victimized by the failures of Obama's Whistle-Blower protection and Obama set the stage for anyone trying to HOLD POWER ACCOUNTABLE to feel the repercussions---whether it is loss of job for reporting fraud and corruption---whether as with Manning and Snowden who were witnessing what they knew to be illegal actions by government and corporate officials so systemic they felt a duty towards all citizens to blow the whistle. More and more we are told----DO NOT BE THAT WHISTLEBLOWER IF IT IS DIRECTED AT THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS. This article does a great job in showing when the entire government is outsourced to global corporations EVERYTHING BECOMES CLASSIFIED---

'He classified 77 million more documents in his first year, making it even more likely that people could leak or disclose classified information. And I think the real issue here is a failure to distinguish between classified information that has not been properly classified, that is being used to hide illegality, mistakes or embarrassment by the administration, versus leaks that are really whistleblower disclosures of fraud, waste and abuse and illegality, which are protected by the Whistleblower Protection Act'.
Obama Has Sentenced Whistleblowers to 10x the Jail Time of All Prior U.S. Presidents Combined
By Rachel Blevins -
Oct 15, 2014

Vindication for Edward Snowden From a New Player in NSA Whistleblowing Saga


Jenna McLaughlinDan Froomkin
May 23 2016, 1:31 p.m.
Image: The GuardianThe Guardian published a stunning new chapter in the saga of NSA whistleblowers on Sunday, revealing a new key player: John Crane, a former assistant inspector general at the Pentagon who was responsible for protecting whistleblowers, then forced to become one himself when the process failed.
An article by Mark Hertsgaard, adapted from his new book, Bravehearts: Whistle Blowing in the Age of Snowden, describes how former NSA official Thomas Drake went through proper channels in his attempt to expose civil-liberties violations at the NSA — and was punished for it. The article vindicates open-government activists who have long argued that whistleblower protections aren’t sufficient in the national security realm.
It vindicates NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden who, well aware of what happened to Drake, gave up his attempts to go through traditional whistleblower channels – and instead handed over his trove of classified documents directly to journalists.
And it adds to the vindication for Drake, who was already a hero in the whistleblower’s pantheon for having endured a four-year persecution by the Justice Department that a judge called “unconscionable.”
The case against Drake, who was initially charged with 10 felony counts of espionage, famously disintegrated before trial – but not before he was professionally and financially ruined. And now it turns out that going through official channels may have actually set off the chain of events that led to his prosecution.
Drake initially took his concerns about wasteful, illegal, and unconstitutional actions by the NSA to high-ranking NSA officials, then to appropriate staff and members of Congress. When that didn’t work, he signed onto a whistleblower complaint to the Pentagon inspector general made by some recently retired NSA staffers. But because he was still working at the NSA, he asked the office to keep his participation anonymous.
Now, Hertsgaard writes that Crane alleges that his former colleagues in the inspector general’s office “revealed Drake’s identity to the Justice Department; then they withheld (and perhaps destroyed) evidence after Drake was indicted; finally, they lied about all this to a federal judge.”
Crane’s growing concerns about his office’s conduct pushed him to his breaking point, according to Hertsgaard. But his supervisors ignored his concerns, gave him the silent treatment, and finally forced him to resign in January 2013.
Due to Crane’s continued efforts, however, the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the Department of Defense for its treatment of whistleblowers, and Hertsgaard tells The Intercept that a public report on the results of the investigation is expected next year.
Crane brings unprecedented evidence from inside the system that ostensibly protects whistleblowers that the system isn’t working. And defenders of the system can’t accuse him of having an outside agenda. Crane has never taken a position for or against the NSA’s programs, or made contact with Drake during the investigation.
“Crane kind of made it a point not to know him,” Hertsgaard told The Intercept on Monday. “He didn’t want it to become something personal.”
For him, it was about whistleblowing, Hertsgaard explained, and the principle that “anonymity must be absolutely sacred.”
Snowden told The Guardian that Drake’s persecution was very much on his mind when he decided to go outside normal channels. And he told The Guardian that colleagues and supervisors warned him about raising his concerns, telling him, “You’re playing with fire.”
In his Guardian interview, Snowden called for changes.
“We need iron-clad, enforceable protections for whistleblowers, and we need a public record of success stories,” he said. “Protect the people who go to members of Congress with oversight roles, and if their efforts lead to a positive change in policy – recognize them for their efforts. There are no incentives for people to stand up against an agency on the wrong side of the law today, and that’s got to change.”
U.S. officials, including President Barack Obama and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, have insisted that Snowden should and could have gone through channels – and would have been heard.
“When people look at Edward Snowden, he’s the most famous,” Hertsgaard told The Intercept. “What they don’t realize is just how exceptional he is. He actually got his message out and he lived to tell the tale. … That is highly unusual. In most cases, whistleblowers pay with their lives to save ours.”
Hertsgaard writes in his book about many other whistleblowers whose stories are slightly less dramatic, but no less important. “I’m hoping campaign reporters will press Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump on this,” he said.

When a citizens understands that left-leaning means protecting labor and the poor they understand far-right Wall Street Libertarian Marxism is the opposite.  We know Mao was installed after graduating from Yale to transform China into a labor-ready industrial society with the GREAT LEAP FORWARD JUST AS TODAY'S MOVING FORWARD.

Below you see the very ideals of Mao playing out in CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.  Convict reform centers on labor-----re-education centers on vocational K-career college----and forced job placement comes with today's VOCATIONAL TRACKING WITH TESTING STARTING AT PRE-K---PARENTS AND STUDENTS HAVE NO CHOICE ON  THIS TRACKING.  This has been installed these several years of Obama especially in very neo-conservative cities like Baltimore.  We are seeing with global corporate campuses loss of choice in jobs----we are told where we will work and what education must be taken to get there.  THIS IS THE MIRROR OF MAO'S CHINA.

Once citizens understand this they can visualize how the rest of Mao's reign of terror may play out because it takes fear, militarized policing, and imprisonment for a 2% of the 1% to bring 99% of Chinese----or now Americans ----down to subjects with no freedom.

You see the same YOUTH LEADERSHIP EDUCATION CENTERS as in Baltimore where all youth are indoctrinated to this Wall Street/Johns Hopkins policy stance with no other political voices allowed.  We are seeing the focus on drug/rehabilitation centers, and post-imprisonment re-entry centers. 

This is the entirety of Baltimore's public education.


'the Laogai system consists of three distinct types of reform: convict labor (Laogai), reeducation through labor (Laojiao), and forced job placement (Jiuye)'.

Administrative detention facilities in which inmates are forced to labor and endure political indoctrination include legal education centers, drug rehabilitation centers, and custody and education centers.

This article shows Mao's destruction of the Chinese culture just as today Wall Street and global pols are moving to destroy American society.  I have black and brown friends who think this is a step towards killing white Western culture but it is not---it is simply a stage of massive brutalization tied to shaking people's ideas of freedom, choice, free will, right and wrong out-----and install this total commitment of people to their work and the corporation.  If you look at today's Asian nation citizens---South Korea, China, Singapore, Malaysia----they have all undergone this RE-EDUCATION and destruction of their national cultures. 

IT TAKES A GREAT DEAL OF MILITARIZATION AND MULTIPLE LEVELS OF IMPRISONMENT TO BEAT A PERSON'S SENSE OF SELF.




The Laogai System: China’s vast system of prisons and detention facilities in which inmates are forced to labor and endure Communist Party political indoctrination.

Named after the historical laogai labor camp, which was the original prison camp system established by Mao Zedong in the early 1950s, the term “Laogai System” highlights the historical continuity of Communist Party criminal and administrative detention practices. Despite undergoing cosmetic changes, the ideology and purposes underpinning the Laogai System remain the same: to maintain the Communist Party’s monopoly on power through detaining convicted criminals and those deemed disruptive to political stability in an effort to transform them to conform to socialist ideals through forced labor and political indoctrination. As maintaining the political supremacy of the Communist Party through expediently administering punishment serves as a core function of the Laogai System, procedures used to convict detainees often fall short of international standards proscribing arbitrary detention. In addition to neutralizing potential sources of instability, throughout history, the Laogai System has provided free prison labor to construct public works projects, produce consumer goods, enrich Communist Party officials, and arguably enhance the price competitiveness of Chinese exports.




Communist Repression With Chinese Characteristics


The Laogai System’s emphasis on political indoctrination and forced labor is rooted in historical Chinese penal philosophies and communist revolutionary ideology. In line with Mencian and Confucian philosophies, Chinese penologists have long held that criminality springs from ignorance. According to this view, authorities could significantly reduce or even eradicate anti-social behavior by teaching ordinary citizens proper behavior and reforming criminals through education. During the Republican era, as the Nationalist government sought to modernize Chinese criminal detention practices, authorities established a nationwide prison system modeled after Western penal institutions but adapted to accommodate traditional Chinese criminal justice philosophies. The concept of ganhua, a term connoting moral transformation, served as the fundamental guiding principle of these early prisons. The philosophy underlying ganhua had three essential components: forced labor, moral instruction, and basic education. As Republican penologists believed that idleness and ignorance bred criminality, it followed that authorities could reduce recidivism by forcing inmates to perform productive labor and attend lectures. After 1949, the communists abandoned the Republican era prison project in favor of the labor camp; outdoor agricultural colonies that could better accommodate the massive influx of prisoners following “liberation.” Despite repudiating traditional Chinese philosophies and customs, the communists essentially cloaked the concept of ganhua in new political garb. However, rather than merely aiming to reduce recidivism, the communists sought to transform labor camp inmates into “new socialist men.”

KEEP IN MIND----THE GOAL OF 1% WALL STREET LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS IS TO TAKE ALL AMERICANS DOWN TO THIS OVERSEAS WAGE SCALE---AND THEY ARE CALLING IT MARXISM.  THEY STILL HAVE ALL THE WEALTH----THE 99% LIVES LIKE CHINESE UNDER MAO.


The Laogai System is also deeply rooted in communist revolutionary ideology aimed at building a classless society through using labor camps to overcome resistance from capitalists or landowners who may oppose the nationalization of the means of production. In 1875, Karl Marx proposed establishing institutions that would transform deviants into benevolent citizens by forcing them to engage in “productive labor” under “non-exploitative” conditions. Felix Dzerzhinsky, Lenin’s security chief, implemented this concept in the 1920s by establishing the Gulag, the term used to describe the Soviet Union’s vast system of labor camps. Hardly unique to the Soviet Union and China, communist regimes throughout the world have established labor camps as fundamental components of their criminal justice systems.


Even during the Republican era, Chinese government officials--many of whom were hostile toward the Chinese Communist Party--increasingly looked to the Soviet Union’s Gulag as a viable alternative to the country’s overcrowded and inefficient prison system. In the 1930s, the Nationalist government experimented with the Soviet model by establishing agricultural colonies loosely modeled after the Gulag. When Mao took power in 1949, the communists naturally invited Soviet specialists to assist them in establishing the Laogai System.


Laogai By Any Other Name


The Laogai System was originally comprised of two types of labor camps: the laogai and the laojiao. The ‘laogai’ (reform through labor) camp was a form of criminal punishment established to punish convicted defendants, whereas the ‘laojiao’ (reeducation through labor) camp was a form of administrative punishment designed to incarcerate so-called class enemies and petty criminals without the time and evidentiary burdens of a trial. Although laogai sentences theoretically carried a fixed term, laojiao inmates originally served terms of indefinite duration. In 1979, however, authorities limited laojiao sentences to four years, the maximum term of confinement until the system was formally abolished in 2013. In response to pressure to abolish reform-through-labor, authorities ostensibly ended the laogai labor camp in 1994 by changing the name of these camps to ‘prisons.’
Although the Communist Party nominally ended the laogai labor camp and recently formally abolished the laojiao labor camp, the fundamental structure of the Laogai System remains intact: the Party still operates a network of prison factories for convicted criminals and administrative detention facilities for non-criminal offenders in which inmates are forced to perform arduous labor and undergo intense political indoctrination. Administrative detention facilities in which inmates are forced to labor and endure political indoctrination include legal education centers, drug rehabilitation centers, and custody and education centers.


Following the abolition of laojiao, the Party announced its intention to create “community correction centers.” Official state media reports indicate that inmates in these facilities will be forced to labor and endure political indoctrination. Establishing community correction centers as a replacement for laojiao mirrors the Party’s historical practice of closing politically problematic Laogai System detention centers in favor of relying on alternative arbitrary detention facilities where inmates are forced to labor and undergo Communist Party political indoctrination.
The Party also uses other extrajudicial methods of intimidating and detaining individuals deemed disruptive to political stability. Such practices include confining people in “black jails” and psychiatric hospitals. Although inmates in these facilities are often detained for long periods of time and reportedly tortured, they are typically not forced to labor, which means these jails are not properly classified as part of the Laogai System. 
Although the Chinese government classifies the number of inmates in its prison and administrative detention facilities as a state secret, the Laogai Research Foundation estimates that the Laogai System is currently comprised of over one thousand detention facilities in which millions of individuals are imprisoned. Since its inception, we estimate that over fifty million people have been incarcerated in the Laogai System.

________________________________________

To move the US from a social Democracy with strong public institutions protecting our rights as citizens to what we have today------a capture of both political parties by global Wall Street corporate colonizers REAGAN/CLINTON had to create systemic unemployment to impoverish most Americans and then have this massive prison system to keep lives of the poor in constant instability----while corporations were still paying taxes through 1980s----2000s they are not anymore.  Sending those taxes to for-profit prisons maximized profits but now they do not need prisons----they have reduced people to simply needing any job.  Now they are building forced labor into global corporate campuses and global factories.

'INCARCERATION WITHOUT THE BURDENS OF A TRIAL'.

NO NEED FOR PRISONS FOR PETTY CRIMES AND POLITICAL PRISONERS.

'whereas the ‘laojiao’ (reeducation through labor) camp was a form of administrative punishment designed to incarcerate so-called class enemies and petty criminals without the time and evidentiary burdens of a trial. Although laogai sentences theoretically carried a fixed term, laojiao inmates originally served terms of indefinite duration'.

Below we see the steps towards just this.  Prisoners are released and hooked with prisoner-release programs tied to JOB TRAINING, JOB TRAINING, JOB TRAINING......volunteerism.....internships that will seem to never end.  We are made to think this is a softening of criminalization when it is simply building a structure for forced labor.


OK, So Who Gets to Go Free?

1.4k 211 Everyone wants to reduce America’s prison population. Now comes the hard part.By Leon Neyfakh


Is he violent or not?

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Thinkstock.


It has become conventional wisdom that America’s prisons are too full, and prominent elected officials on both sides of the aisle have expressed enthusiastic support for reducing the number of Americans behind bars. Of course, different politicians have different ideas about how to pursue this goal. Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, have proposed legislation that would make prison sentences shorter, by loosening mandatory minimum laws and giving judges more leeway in doling out punishment. Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D–Rhode Island, are pushing to allow more inmates to leave prison early by going through rehabilitation programs.

Leon Neyfakh Leon Neyfakh is a Slate staff writer.


One thing all these reform-minded lawmakers seem to agree on is that the beneficiaries of a more lenient criminal justice system should be strictly limited to nonviolent offenders—people who were convicted of drug offenses, property crimes, and other low-level felonies. The Lee-Durbin bill, for instance, would affect only nonviolent drug offenders while the Portman-Whitehouse proposal explicitly excludes violent offenders. At the state level, meanwhile, we’re seeing more lenient policies for drug and minor property offenses, according to Stanford Law School professor Joan Petersilia, but violent offenses “aren’t being touched, in the main.”
In light of this, experts on America’s prison system are beginning to sound an alarm: If reform-minded politicians continue to limit the prison-reduction discussion to nonviolent offenders and refuse to take up the more difficult work of re-evaluating harsh sentencing policies for people convicted of more serious crimes like armed robbery, rape, and murder, then the country’s prison population will never fall very far.


“Violence is a much more capacious legal category than most people assume.”


Jonathan Simon, director of the Center for the Study of Law & Society at the UC–Berkeley“Lots of people think that 80 percent of the people who are locked up are there for low-level drug offenses, and that’s not even close to being true,” Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that advocates for reducing the prison population, told me this week. “Half the people in state prisons today have been convicted of a violent offense. That’s what they’re serving time for,” he said. “There’s going to be an inherent limitation on how much of a reduction in incarceration we can achieve if we’re not even considering them.”


You might be wondering, quite reasonably: Why would we even want to prevail over that “inherent limitation”? Yes, too many Americans are in prison. But prisons exist for a reason—to remove violent criminals from the streets and to punish them for the violence they’ve committed.
Here’s the thing, though: It turns out the line between “violent offenders” and “nonviolent offenders” is a lot harder to draw than you might think.
“A significant number of people who have been convicted of violent offenses aren’t violent people,” said Joe Margulies, a visiting professor of law and government at Cornell University who is working on a book about criminal justice reform. “People who never hurt anyone, who never confronted a victim, can nevertheless be convicted of violent crimes.”


This might seem strange, but there are criminal statutes all over the country that routinely result in defendants being classified as “violent” in the eyes of the law even though most people would never describe their deeds that way. Many crimes are legally considered violent “even if no force is used, let alone injury suffered,” said Jonathan Simon, the director of the Center for the Study of Law & Society at the University of California in Berkeley, in an email. He added, “violence is a much more capacious legal category than most people assume.”
One example of a crime that’s legally defined as “violent” in many states even though it doesn’t necessarily involve any actual violence is illegal gun possession. Other examples include burglarizing an occupied dwelling or serving as a getaway driver while someone else commits an armed robbery. Statutory rape stemming from consensual sex between an adult and a minor is also typically classified as a violent offense.


Perhaps the best illustration of how a not-necessarily-violent person can be found guilty of a violent crime involves “felony murder.” In many states, you can be convicted of felony murder for having been present when someone you are affiliated with committed a homicide, even if you never touched a weapon, let alone actually killed someone. Critics of “felony murder” laws argue that while you may well deserve to go to prison for being part of such a crime, you don’t deserve the same label as the trigger man.
“Tens of thousands of people in California are serving life sentences for this crime,” said Petersilia, who is the co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center and a member of the Department of Justice Scientific Advisory Board. “If you’re at a party and gang activity breaks out and someone gets shot, all the people who were there—everyone who came with that person who did the shooting, or was part of their gang—can then be convicted of felony murder.”


It seems clear, then, that there are many people serving time for violent offenses who haven’t actually committed violent acts and might be good candidates for reduced sentences. That might sound like good news for reformers, but Petersilia points out that the flaws in the violent/nonviolent labels run both ways:

Many offenders who are labeled “nonviolent” actually did commit violent crimes but were able to negotiate for lesser charges in exchange for pleading guilty.
“They’re not clean labels,” said Petersilia. “And it’s a very, very serious problem, because we are downsizing prisons based on these categories. Legislation is being based on these categories that don’t reflect the seriousness of the offender.”
The basis on which we’re deciding who should and shouldn’t be a beneficiary of decarceration is thus fundamentally flawed. So what would be a better approach? Some experts, including Petersilia and Margulies, believe in using so-called risk assessment tools to determine how dangerous individual inmates really are. These tools, which have long been used by parole boards to decide who can be safely let out of prison, come in many different forms, but the basic idea is to use a variety of facts about the offender’s criminal history, mental health status, and prison record to statistically predict whether he or she is likely to commit crime in the future.  

Margulies says that when you use risk assessment tools, and take seriously their ability to predict future behavior, you are disabused of the idea that “someone who was convicted some years ago of a violent offense is by definition a violent person.” Many inmates serving time for violent crimes are, for a variety of reasons, unlikely to be dangerous if they are released back into society, whether it’s because they were never violent in the first place, or because the recidivism rate for certain violent crimes is actually exceedingly low, or simply because the inmate has grown older—a significant factor because people are known to age out of crime.

If our goal is to separate dangerous offenders from not-dangerous ones, Margulies added, using the most sophisticated risk assessment tools out there lets us do that in a much more nuanced way than by simply looking at an offender’s crime of conviction. (Of course, a strong argument can be made that the purpose of prison isn’t only about keeping potentially dangerous people off the street—it’s also about punishment and deterrence. Just because an inmate is found to be a low risk for recidivism doesn’t necessarily mean he should be granted leniency.)
So far, as Dana Goldstein at the Marshall Project documented in an excellent article Wednesday morning, there is an understandable resistance among politicians, particularly on the right, to extending reform efforts to violent offenders. That represents a serious obstacle to some of the more ambitious reform goals advocates are talking about, like reducing America’s prison population by 50 percent within 10 or 15 years. If releasing violent offenders is politically impossible, the best hope for successful reform might be redefining whom we deem violent in the first place.

______________________________________________

The corruption of US city mayors came from CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ERA Tammany Hall politics where candidates for office were recruited for their propensity to do what WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT AND A VERY,VERY, VERY NEO-CONSERVATIVE JOHNS HOPKINS told them.  This corruption came from Wall Street/the FED/Congress----as policies were passed that moved the fraud----such as the subprime mortgage frauds and now the US Treasury and bond market frauds.  Yes, the mayors AIDED AND ABETTED these crimes coming from Congress, then Maryland Assembly----but they were in the position of stopping these crimes if they were not already SHOW ME THE MONEY WALL STREET PLAYERS ready to do what the development corporations told them.

Above we saw the Chinese Libertarian Marxism created many levels of forced labor and broadened who was now without rights ----INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY----political prisoners.  I have shouted these several years that the 5% to the 1% who aided and abetted all these crimes would lose all that wealth and be thrown under the bus with all those they betrayed as elected officials and below you see this happening. 

LIBERTARIANS SAY ACCUMULATE WEALTH ANYWAY YOU CAN UNTIL THEY WANT ALL THAT WEALTH TO THE 1% ANY WAY THEY CAN.

Everyone will remember Blagojevich and his never-ending belief he would not go to prison.  He felt that way because these few decades with systemic ANTI-FORALIST fraud and corruption he was still going to be protected.  He did not understand that WALL STREET AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS no longer need the 5% to the 1% and are now getting rid of them.  We may see a few more elections with the remaining 3% but they will fall into the political prisoner gulag as the global 2% are installed next decade.

RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION IS STILL OCCURRING----WALL STREET SIMPLY WILL NO LONGER ALLOW CRONY POLS TO FEED CORRUPT PATRONAGE MACHINES----ALL THE MONEY NOW GOES TO THE TOP.


Rod Blagojevich[3][4][5](/bləˈɡɔɪ.əvɪtʃ/, born December 10, 1956) served as the 40th Governor of Illinois from 2003 to 2009.
A Democrat, Blagojevich was a state representative before being elected to the United States House of Representatives representing parts of Chicago. He was elected governor in 2002,[6] the first Democrat to win the office since Dan Walker's victory 30 years earlier.[7][8] Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office for corruption; he solicited bribes for political appointments, including Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat after he was elected president in 2008, and Blagojevich was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in federal prison.



Former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been described as the most corrupt US mayor in recent years



Corrupt US mayors pose a
threat to decency in society
Research by City Mayors*
16 July 2014: The preamble to the City Mayors’ Code of Ethics states that honest local government is the foundation of any nation that strives to provide its citizens with happiness, security and prosperity. It continues to say that corruption and misconduct by local government officials threaten fundamental decency in a society. America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which warns that public corruption poses a fundamental threat to national security and the US way of life, has over the past four decades investigated hundreds of elected officials, who used their positions to enrich themselves. Among those convicted are leaders of some of the largest US cities, including Detroit, New Orleans or Baltimore, but also many mayors from small-town America.

The title of the most corrupt US mayor in recent years must go to Detroit’s Kwame Kilpatrick, who took office in 2002, promising to revitalise the city. Instead he used his position to steal from the citizens he had promised to serve. FBI Special Agent Robert Beckman, who investigated the mayor and his corrupt regime for eight years, said that criminal activity was a way of life for him. “He constantly used the power of his office to look for new opportunities to make money illegally.”

In July 2013, Kwame Kilpatrick was given a 28-year prison sentence for racketeering, extortion, bribery and fraud. In its submission the FBI said that Kilpatrick and his associates established a ‘pay to play’ system that made breaking the law standard operating procedure. “Kilpatrick extorted city vendors, rigged bids, and took bribes. He used funds from non-profit civic organisations to line his pockets and those of his family. And he was unabashed about it.”

Trenton’s (NJ) former mayor Tony Mack received a 58-months prison sentence in May 2014 after being convicted of extortion and bribery. Together with his brother Ralphiel, the former mayor operated a scheme of accepting bribes in exchange for assisting local businesses. A member of the US Attorney’s office told the court that within 10 weeks of moving into City Hall, the mayor started to sell influence. “Instead of providing transparent government to the citizens of Trenton, Tony Mack and his brother allowed themselves to succumb to self-interest and greed.”

Ray Nagin, who served as Mayor of New Orleans from 2002 to 2010, came to national and international prominence in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed large parts of the city. In 2009, three years after being re-elected to a second term, allegations began to emerge of the mayor using his office to obtain benefits from local companies supplying the city. In February 2014, a court convicted Ray Nagin of bribery and extortion. The court was told that the mayor took more than $500,000 n payouts from businessmen in exchange for millions of dollars' worth of city contracts.

The former mayor’s sentencing brought to a close close a sordid chapter in New Orleans’ history in which the man charged with leading a city out of crisis instead chose to enrich himself, his family and friends. Despite New Orleans' long history of political corruption, Nagin was the first mayor to be criminally charged for corruption in office.

After only four months in office, Patrick Cannon, Mayor of Charlotte (NC), resigned after he was arrested by the FBI for public theft and bribery. The arrest followed an FBI sting operation that dated back to 2010. Following the former mayor’s guilty plea in June 2014, a spokesman for the US Attorney office said in a statement that Parick Cannon had used his official position to enrich himself at the expense of the City of Charlotte. “Through his actions, Cannon betrayed the trust of his constituents and his peers, compromised the integrity of our local government, and damaged Charlotte’s good reputation as a city that does business the honest way.”

List of US mayors who used their office
to enrich themselves and their associates
Mayor CityIndictmentsSentenceYear of sentence
Tony MackTrenton, NJ (Popl 84,500)Corruption58 months prison2014
Ray NaginNew Orleans, LA (369,250)Corruption10 years prison2014
Patrick Cannon Charlotte, NC (793,000)Theft and briberyAwaiting sentence2014
Omar Leonel VelaProgreso, TX (5,700)Bribery and corruptionAwaiting sentence2014
Kwame KilpatrickDetroit, MI (701,500)Racketeering, extortion, mail fraud28 years prison2013
Dennis P. ElwellSecaucus, NJ (18,350)BriberyPrison2011
Larry KangfordBirmingham, AL (212,000)Bribery, fraud15 years prison2010
Eddie PriceMandeville, LA (12,100)Tax evasion and corruption40 months prison2010
Peter CammaranoHoboken, NJExtortion24 months prison2009
Sheila Ann DixonBaltimore, MD (621,000)EmbezzlementLoss of pension2009
Sharpe JamesNewark, NJ (277,000)Fraud27 months prison2008
Samuel RiveraPassaic, NJ (70,200)Attempted extortion21 months prison2008
Emmanuel OnunworEast Cleveland, OH (17,800)Corruption and tax evasion9 years prison2005
Anthony RussoHoboken, NJ (52,000)Public corruption30 months prison2004
Joseph Peter GanimBridgeport. CN (146,400)KickbacksPrison2003
Vincent Albert CianciProvidence, RI (178,400)Racketeering5 years prison2002
Betty Loren-MalteseCicero, IL (84,000)Insurance fraud 8 years prison2002
Milon MilanCamden, NJ (77,300)Corruption7 years prison2000
Raúl L. MartínezHialeah, FL (231,900)Extortion and racketeeringJury deadlocked1996
Walter TuckerCompton, CA (97,600)Extortion and tax evasion27 months prison1996
Charles PanikiChicago Heights, IL (30,400)Bribery10 years prison1993
Gerald McCannJersey City, NJ (254,400)Fraud2 years prison1992
Alex DaoudMiami Beach, FL (90,600)Bribery18 months prison1991
Lee AlexanderSyracure, NY (145,000)Racketeering, extortion, tax invasion, bribery10 years prison1988
Michael J. MatthewsAtlantic City, NJ (39,500)Bribery15 years prison1984
Edward McIntyreAugusta, GA (194,300)ExtortionPrison1984
Angelo Joseph ErrichettiCamden, NJ (77,300)Bribery3 years prison1981
William SomersAtlantic City, NJ (39,500)Extortionn/a1972
Thomas WhelanJersey City, NJ (254,400)Conspiracy and extortion 15 years prison1971
Hugh Joseph AddonizioNewark, NJ (277,000)BriberyPrison1970
The above list is not necessarily inclusive. Please infor us of any other cases of city hall corruption.

Other recent cases of mayors arrested, indicted
and / or convicted for offences while in office:
• Mayor of West New York, NJ, arrested for computer hacking (2012)
• Mayor of Walnut Grove, Mississippi, for witness tampering (2012)
• Mayor of Upland, CA, convicted of accepting bribes (2012)
• Mayor of Nogales, Arizona, charged with bribery, theft and fraud (2012)
• Mayor of Cedarville, Arkansas, convicted of theft (2012)
• Mayor of Vicksburg, Mississippi, convicted of bribery (2013)
• Mayor of Junction City, Kansas, convicted of bribery (2012)
• Mayor of Melissa, Texas, indicted on bribery (2012)
• Mayor of Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, arrested for bribery (2012)
• Mayor of Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, indicted on bribery and extortion (2014)
• Mayor of St Gabriel, LA, indicted on racketeering (2010)
• Mayor of Ball, LA, convicted of hurricane disaster fraud (2011)
• Mayor of Sweetwater, Florida, convicted of corruption (2014)
• Mayor of South Pittsburg, TN, convicted of running illegal gambling business
• Mayor of Grandview, Missouri, convicted of charity fraud (2014)
• Mayor of Cudahy, CA, pleads guilty to extortion and bribery (2012)
• Mayor of Port Allen, LA, convicted of racketeering (2012)
• Mayor of Kinloch, Missouri, convicted for fraud and embezzlement (2011)
• Mayor of Mandeville, LA, convicted for tax evasion (2010)
• Mayor of Pineville, Kentucky, pleaded guilty to vote buying (2009)
• Mayor of Niagara Falls, NY, pleaded guilty to fraud (2010)
• Mayor of Hamilton, NJ, charged with attempted extortion (2012)
• Mayor of New Roads, LA, indicted on racketeering (2010)

______________________________________
No one is more far-right Libertarian then BILL NYE THE SCIENCE GUY. He is right---the Catholic Church did jail people for simply not believing as they do-------when we have the STEM FOLKS----the humanists who now think they can control all we know and are as the 1% are industrialists creating these climate change problems.

'Apparently science is not a field for challenging accepted thought, but rather one that encourages indoctrination and jailing of all those who dissent'.
As a scientist myself-----I see a really far-right pragmatic nilism when people, even jokingly start saying things like this. NYE knows the voters who don't buy into climate change are motivated by the fact that they did not bring this mess on ----the global industrialists did. NYE seems to back all those REPUBLICANS who are those industrialists.
If the American people think this is just hyperbole----this is how the cascade of jailing people for simply their beliefs starts.


Bill Nye: Throw ‘climate deniers’ in jail [VIDEO]

By Ryan Girdusky | April 14, 2016 | Comments

Image via Screenshot
Galileo was jailed for heresy when he spoke against the theory that the Earth was the center of the universe. Thankfully, the Catholic Church no longer calls for imprisoning scientists or politicians who question popular opinion — only some Social Justice Warriors still demand jailing heretics.
The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) posted a video to YouTube on Thursday with Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy,’ discussing whether “climate deniers” and energy CEOs should be jailed like war criminals.
“We’ll see what happens, was it appropriate to jail the guys at Enron?” Nye asked. “Was it appropriate to jail people from the cigarette industry who insisted that this addictive product was not addictive?”
“For me, as a taxpayer and voter, the introduction of this extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my quality of life as a public citizen,” he continued. “So I can see where people are very concerned about this and are pursuing criminal investigations as well as in engaging in discussions like this.”
Apparently science is not a field for challenging accepted thought, but rather one that encourages indoctrination and jailing of all those who dissent.

_______________________________________
We know this problem of police, CIA, NSA, SWAT-----of planting evidence and in the cases below ENTRAPMENT----bringing people along that may think to do something but may never had acted upon it.  It's like that parent that raises a hand and says they are going to beat the heck out of the child but never does.  Across America as civil unrest rises because of American citizens knowing their government is corrupt and being hijacked they will fight this increasing authoritarianism and end as political prisoners.

Ask anyone from an already authoritarian nation like IRAN or CHINA and they will educate as to the hundreds of ways poltical dissenters are jailed.  I gave the example of Bill Nye deliberately demonizing people who have religious beliefs while being tied to the corporate industrial executives really doing the damage.

The criminalization of political opposition in America

12 May 2014

“While the current rash of anti-democratic measures largely targets non-citizens, mainly of Middle-Eastern descent, they constitute a fundamental attack on the basic rights of the entire population. These attacks will be extended to American citizens, especially those who oppose the government’s policies, sooner rather than later.”
So declared the World Socialist Web Site more than a dozen years ago, commenting on the passage of the Patriot Act and establishment of military tribunals by the Bush administration. The actions of the Obama administration, whose “anti-terror” policies represent an escalation of the assault on democratic rights under Bush, fully vindicate this warning.

The past month has brought the criminalization of political dissent in the United States to a new stage, with the May 5 conviction of 25-year-old Cecily McMillan for assaulting a policeman during the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City, and the April 25 sentencing of three anti-NATO protesters to long prison terms for taking part in discussions about violence initiated by two Chicago police infiltrators.
The circumstances of both cases are outrageous, with severe penalties being imposed on individuals who are not criminals, but political opponents of the policies of the Obama administration and corporate America, for which they have become victims of police violence and provocation. The cases involve people who took part in peaceful, legal protests in New York City and Chicago, only to be framed up and convicted on felony charges.



Cecily McMillan faces a jail term of up to seven years in prison because she inadvertently elbowed a New York City cop as he was manhandling her during the police operation that broke up a demonstration in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park on March 17, 2012. This occurred at the tail end of the Occupy Wall Street protests against corporate greed and social inequality. Sentencing is set for May 19.
The trial judge barred presentation of evidence on McMillan’s injuries while allowing the prosecution to show an anonymous, grainy YouTube video of the incident, which, according to the prosecution, supported the police version of events. So flagrant is the injustice in McMillan’s case that nine of the twelve jurors who convicted her wrote to the judge asking that she be given probation rather than a prison sentence.


In the NATO 3 case, the victims of government frame-up are three young men, Brian Church, 22, Brent Betterly, 26, and Jared Chase, 28. They were sentenced to five, six and eight years in prison respectively. Their “crime” was to be taken in by two undercover cops who engaged them in drunken discussions prior to a May, 2012 demonstration at a NATO summit in Chicago about throwing Molotov cocktails into police stations, an Obama election campaign office, and the home of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.


The three were induced to fill with gasoline some of the bottles they had emptied of beer, but none of the alleged weapons ever left the apartment in which they were staying. No evidence was presented that the three actually planned to go through with the attacks. That, however, did not stop the prosecution from branding them as terrorists and seeking convictions for violating an Illinois state law modeled on the federal Patriot Act. A local jury acquitted them of the terror charges, but convicted them of lesser counts of possession of incendiary devices—the beer bottles—for which they received substantial prison terms.
These frame-ups follow a pattern that has now become familiar, where individuals are targeted either because they are politically active or vulnerable to provocation, and prosecuted for actions that are either fabricated out of whole cloth, or would never have occurred in the absence of incitement by police agents.


Among the most prominent recent cases:


* The 2010 imprisonment of Lynne Stewart, the attorney who represented the blind sheik, Omar Abdul-Rahman, who was convicted of conspiring to bomb targets in New York City. Stewart was convicted on charges of carrying messages from her client to the public, in violation of prison regulations, and spent four years in prison before being released early this year, at age 74, facing impending death due to cancer.


* The September 2010 raids on homes and offices of members of the Twin Cities Antiwar Committee and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization in Minneapolis and Chicago, where one alleged “offense” was that some of those involved in the group had visited Colombia and occupied Palestine. The Obama administration justified the raids under the “material support for terrorism” provisions of the Patriot Act.


* The conviction and imprisonment in 2012 of five young men described as “anarchists” in Cleveland, under circumstances nearly identical to the NATO 3 case, for an alleged plot to bomb a highway bridge. The “plot” was devised by FBI agents using a confidential informant. The sting operation targeted people active in the Occupy Wall Street protests. It required six months to convince the five young men to agree to buy what they were told were explosives from undercover operatives, leading to the arrests. At least two of the arrested men were said to have mental problems. They were sentenced to between 6 and 11.5 years.


* The July 2012 FBI raids on the homes of anti-Wall Street protesters in Portland, Oregon and Seattle and Olympia, Washington. As in the 2010 raids, dozens of heavily armed federal agents smashed down doors and used stun grenades, pulling their victims from their beds at gunpoint, then seizing computers, literature, banners and other explicitly political materials. A warrant presented at one home cited the need to confiscate “anti-government or anarchist literature or material.”


The political significance of all these cases is that they were actions carried out by the Obama administration and had either the direct participation or the political blessing of the FBI, the Justice Department and other agencies of the federal government.


The examples given above are not merely isolated examples, but test cases for repressive measures that will be taken on a far wider scale in the event of a broader movement among working people against imperialist war and the ceaseless attacks on jobs and living standards at home.


No section of the American ruling class and no institution of the capitalist state, including the courts, will lift a finger against such sweeping attacks on democratic rights. Those who might doubt this should recall last year’s military-police lockdown of Boston following the Boston Marathon bombings. They should also take note of the statement earlier this year by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, referring to the mass detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II, when he declared, “you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again” under conditions of a major American war.
In the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration drew up plans (Operation Rex ‘84) for the mass detention of hundreds of thousands of Central American immigrants and other likely opponents of a US invasion of Nicaragua or El Salvador. There is no doubt that similar plans exist, in a far more developed form, for contingencies such as a US invasion of Iran or war with China or Russia.

The National Defense Authorization Act (2012) expressly gives the US military the power to seize and imprison any person anywhere in the world, including within the US, on “terror” allegations—without charges, evidence, or trial. And as the revelations by Edward Snowden demonstrate, the US government is using its vast surveillance and data collection apparatus to create political dossiers of those individuals who would be targeted for such repression.
The Socialist Equality Party demands the release of the NATO 3 and Cecily McMillan and all others imprisoned in the United States as the result of political frame-ups. The defense of democratic rights and the abolition of police-state measures must be linked to the independent mobilization of the working class in opposition to the political representatives of the corporate and financial aristocracy and the capitalist system they defend.

Patrick Martin

_____________________________________

One would look to Stalinist prisons to find the prison structures in Baltimore today.  I watched a video on Russian prison culture and it mirrors that of Baltimore.  Mao and Stalin created layers of societal structures inside jails making it impossible for those imprisoned to be able to form alliances.  If you were an intellectual jailed as a political prisoner you would find it almost impossible to find someone to trust.  MAO and STALIN created the SNITCHING structure in prisons.  Baltimore jail was left with no oversight and accountability with only the inmates controlling life inside------in this case we are told a BLACK GUERILLA GANG was allowed to rule over the jail ----as happened in far-right MAO and STALIN prisons.

Social Democrats had for decades installed oversight and accountability that at least created some justice inside these prisons---California before Reagan had the most socially progressive prisons that are now the world's worst.

Baltimore's jail is being torn down not because the city is getting soft on injustice ----it simply wants to develop that real estate ----and any job training will be tied to forced labor.

Baltimore is a few decades ahead of other US cities in installing US International Economic Zone structures so citizens lost their voices a few decades ago, corruption even for Baltimore standards went wild---and police brutality has soared from having far-right neo-conservatives and Clinton/Obama neo-liberals in US city leadership.




'How should the MDC reuse the Warden House? Why not turn it into offices for MDC's use? Better yet, why not convert it into classrooms where parolees can be taught the skills they need to reintegrate into society? This would demonstrate a commitment to correcting the wrongs of the jail's past'.


Preserving Baltimore's slave past
Amanda Nix, Travis Hess

Towson University students argue that part of the city jail with a slave holding past should be preserved.The Maryland Department of Corrections plans to demolish the Warden House along with several other structures at the Baltimore City Detention Center complex before 2021. While it is long past time to cease housing inmates here, the Warden House is worth preserving for the lessons it offers.
Baltimore City authorized construction of what would become the Warden House in 1856. The city needed a new jail, and it selected the plans of brothers and architectural partners Thomas and James Dixon. The Dixons described the jail's planned designs as "Romanesque" and "jail within a jail." They incorporated an apartment for the warden's family. The brothers estimated the jail's construction would cost about $120,000.
The completion of the re-constructed jail in 1859 established Baltimore's role in the slave trade. The jail held hundreds of runaways and abolitionists, both black and white, who helped slaves to freedom, according to nonprofit Baltimore Heritage. In addition to the Warden House, private jails housed slaves for several purposes, including the convenience of the slave owners, according to a 1999 article in this paper. Slave owners traveling through Baltimore checked their slaves into a jail while the owners slept comfortably in a nearby inn. These jails also housed unwanted and unreliable slaves until they were sold to southern plantation owners. The jail was a passage to an uncertain future for those who entered and for those who left.
The Warden House is an important aspect of Baltimore's history that shouldn't be forgotten. Just as with the preservation of the preservation of Auschwitz, the former German Nazi Concentration Camp in Poland, people need a physical reminder of the mistakes others have made so that they're not repeated. Other than the Warden House, no other slave jails remain, according to Baltimore Heritage.
We also need to preserve the Warden House for environmental reasons.


Older buildings are more energy efficient than people think. Buildings built before 1920 are about as energy efficient as those built between 2000 and 2003, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration numbers shared in a March 2009 report by The Abell Foundation. Preserving old buildings makes for less waste in landfills. The Abell Report noted that during a 12-year period, Maryland "saved" 387,000 tons of material from the landfill through preserving older structures.
How should the MDC reuse the Warden House? Why not turn it into offices for MDC's use? Better yet, why not convert it into classrooms where parolees can be taught the skills they need to reintegrate into society? This would demonstrate a commitment to correcting the wrongs of the jail's past.
The structure of the Warden House is more than just a landmark, which some locals today call the "castle." Beyond the style of the structure's classic Victorian gothic design that keeps it a building worth preserving, the jail is Baltimore — history and materials. The Dixon brothers used Patapsco granite for the foundations and window sills. They used light blue stone from Jones Falls for the walls, and they trimmed their work with marble from quarries in Baltimore County.
A plaque denoting the history of the Warden House should be erected on the building. Because of its historical significance, it should become a must-see destination for tourists interested in Baltimore's history. Additionally, history and architecture buffs would delight at being able to see this unique structure, even if only from the outside.
Baltimore is a city rich in historical buildings, and these structures all have a story to tell. Preserving them will give us a chance to heed their lessons.

________________________________________

Republicans are pushing as hard as they can this idea of tying people often having committed no crime to these MAO forced labor as rehabilitation.  This military stance has already shown to be abusive beyond what simply going to jail.  Veterans will tell you if they had received treatment for PTSS through the VA as they were guaranteed by law they may not have been in this forced labor program.  This is now coming to all petty crimes and as these comments show-----the time spent in these JOB TRAINING programs keeps one from moving on with personal choices in life.


These ALTERNATIVE COURTS are growing around the nation to create this system of petty crime forced labor camps.


“The people we talk to, the victims who we try to get consent for these kinds of cases to come in, the most questions we get — and the most resistance we get — are from fellow veterans,”

“If I'd gone to a regular court, I would've done six months of probation and then been through with it,” Jones said. “I think I got more punishment as a veteran.”

Critics of alternative to prison, parole come from ranks of military

By Carl Prine | Sunday, Nov. 10, 2013, 6:33 p.m.
Related Stories

• Trib study finds lack of state, federal regulation for Allegheny County Veterans Court

Military veterans can be the harshest critics of the 168 specialized courts nationwide that provide alternatives to prison or parole for ex-service personnel who commit crimes — often by preventing crime through anger management and substance abuse treatment.
“The people we talk to, the victims who we try to get consent for these kinds of cases to come in, the most questions we get — and the most resistance we get — are from fellow veterans,” said Debra Barnisin-Lange, an assistant Allegheny County district attorney who works with Pittsburgh's Veterans Court.
They want veterans to meet a higher standard of civilian conduct and often are reluctant to cut them a break for arrests, Lange said.
Although these courts often are pitched nationwide as a way for civilian prosecutors and judges to help combat veterans healing from the physical and mental wounds of battle, a Tribune-Review investigation found few of the 66 defendants in Allegheny County Veterans Court from its 2009 founding through 2012 went to war zones; few who deployed were inz combat.


Only a third of the defendants ended up in war zones while in uniform, and nearly all served in rear-echelon jobs such as mechanics, cooks and clerk typists, their military records show.
Four received decorations indicating they underwent extensive combat — three soldiers awarded the Army's Combat Infantryman Badge and a Marine awarded the Combat Action Ribbon. One fought in Vietnam, the others in Iraq and Afghanistan, a Tribune-Review analysis found.
Three of the four defendants with combat exposure committed violent crimes as civilians: a knifing in West Deer, domestic assault in Verona and the beating of two men outside a McKeesport bar in 2011.
That tavern fight involved Sgt. Robert George, 28, an Army paratrooper who was recovering from serious wounds while on leave. He got arrested on his first night home, part of a “huge adjustment period,” he told the Trib. Now honorably discharged from the Army, George said he has the “awesome” county Veterans Court to thank.

“It kept me out of jail. They're fair. They care about you and they work with you,” said George, who is studying computer-aided drafting. “On the downside, you see guys who got into trouble and they abuse the program. They don't understand the consequences of what they did.”


Guidance lacking


Veterans courts nationwide are divided on whether to accept vets who didn't deploy to battle, and the Trib found a lack of defined federal rules on who should be accepted.
In California, for example, Orange County's Combat Veterans Court bars veterans who can't show some connection between their overseas experience and later civilian criminal misconduct — usually through diagnosed traumatic brain injury from roadside mines or post-traumatic stress disorder from combat or sexual trauma.
Judge Jack Carter in Anchorage, the founder in 2004 of what is believed to be the nation's first Veterans Court, said that most of his defendants “had seen combat, most from Vietnam but also Iraq.” He said he started the program because he encountered so many veterans dealing with flashbacks.
Similar to Orange County's docket, Allegheny County veterans must have a diagnosed traumatic brain injury, substance abuse problem or psychological disorder to enter the court, though anyone who deploys to a war zone is presumed to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder that influenced their criminality.
Judge: Don't limit access
As Pennsylvania counties start veterans courts, state Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery, a veteran and former police officer, said he doesn't want them to welcome only combat veterans. Some mental illnesses, such as PTSD, can arise from peacetime operations, he said.
“If we were to say that only guys who had been in combat qualify, OK, what does that mean?” McCaffery asked. “What do we do with a kid who was a reservist and had to pull off the helmet that contained a head, from a training accident?”
The Trib interviewed half of the defendants in Allegheny County Veterans Court before 2013. Each said it was a tough, rewarding experience and would recommend it to other veterans, although some acknowledged having second thoughts about entering.
An Air Force veteran, Terry Lee Jones, 57, of Homewood received treatment and classes at VA Pittsburgh after drunken driving charges in 2012. The heating-air conditioning specialist hasn't committed another crime, according to court records.


“If I'd gone to a regular court, I would've done six months of probation and then been through with it,” Jones said. “I think I got more punishment as a veteran.”

_______________________________________

Above you saw that MAO's answer to prison was forced labor camps with the idea that labor reforms people better than imprisonment.  That is the same prison chain gang talk rising its head again.

Drug courts are simply tying the threat of longer jail time to a visit to one judge instead of simply allowing this person due process to ordinary court.  What has been found across the south especially is the corruption of this process as these single judges then get kickbacks from industry profiting from free labor to keep people in these programs for longer and longer times.

Below this article you will see how this alternative court has already turned into a corrupt process taking further from citizens' rights.  It will end in the same level of injustice only people will be taken from a prison cell and used as forced labor.  What makes this doubly-troubling is the Affordable Care Act tying PHARMA heavily to this drug and alcohol reform.  If you don't see authoritarian abuse getting worse when they are using PHARMA and separate court systems ----you need to re-educate on MAO and STALIN.



Pro & Con: Drug courts an effective alternative for offenders?

11:39 p.m. Monday, April 11, 2011 | Filed in: Opinion


SIGN UP FOR NEW

YES: Done right, drug courts lower recidivism and cut costs.




By Wendy P. Guastaferro


Georgia’s drug courts are positioned to become a model of effective, evidence-based interventions for the Southeast and the nation. Drug courts keep people clean and in treatment longer than other treatment programs. Staying in treatment leads to better outcomes. Drug courts also reduce recidivism and save money.
A state audit report released last year found that Georgia’s drug court participants have significantly lower recidivism rates than drug offenders who serve prison time and cost millions of dollars less than prison. The report recommended the expanded use of drug courts.
Gov. Nathan Deal has called for an increased use of effective alternatives to costly prisons, like drug courts.
While support for drug courts is quickly gaining momentum, they face an incredible threat: their own success.
Drug courts require tireless work by trained, competent, collaborative criminal justice and treatment teams, and rely on donated time from the judiciary, prosecutors and public defenders. Drug courts receive minimal funding ($10 million annually, half of which is local funding), yet achieve the most critical outcomes for Georgia: reducing crime and improving lives.
If asked to continue these monumental tasks while also absorbing offenders diverted from prison without the infrastructure and financial support needed, drug courts face becoming another failed criminal justice experiment. How can we prevent this?
First, drug courts should target high-risk, nonviolent adult offenders to maximize positive outcomes for the individual and public safety. When we say high-risk, we are talking about the probability of committing additional crimes, not the probability that someone will be violent. Targeting those who are most likely to re-offend who also have serious substance abuse problems means providing both intensive legal supervision and treatment.


Programs that target individuals with a high risk for reoffending are up to five times more effective in reducing recidivism compared to those that target low-risk individuals.
Second, drug courts should implement practices that work (such as relapse prevention treatment and changing the way offenders think and see the world, known as cognitive behavioral therapy). They should avoid relying on practices shown to have neutral or negative effects for drug-involved offenders (such as self-esteem programs).
Addiction is one of the most powerful forces in existence. Relapse is part of recovery. If people could stop using drugs because a judge told them to, we would not need drug courts. In order to overcome such a consuming force, drug courts must keep close tabs on their participants and provide effective treatment services.
Drug courts should demand accountability from offenders in their programs. Drug testing should occur randomly two to three times a week. Sanctions for noncompliance and incentives for doing well are essential to changing behavior. Drug courts should use an established treatment curriculum.
Third, developing standards for Georgia’s drug court programs will provide much-needed guidance to localities who want start a program, will improve practices and accountability in existing programs, ensure responsible use of taxpayer dollars and allow for sound drug court program evaluation for Georgia.
Georgia should embrace this unique moment to set the bar for cutting costs, reducing crime and saving lives. But drug courts need continued assistance, an infusion of funding and the political commitment to support a sustainable model.


Wendy P. Guastaferro is an assistant professor of Criminal Justice at Georgia State University and the program evaluator for the DeKalb County Drug Court.



NO: Claims about drug courts aren’t supported by research.


By Margaret Dooley-Sammuli and Nastassia Walsh


Drug addiction is a health problem. So why are U.S. drug policies still seeking solutions in the criminal justice system?
The use of drug courts — programs that seek to reduce drug use through mandated drug treatment and close judicial oversight — has grown dramatically over the last 20 years thanks to moving success stories and enthusiastic proponents within the criminal justice system. These success stories are real and deserve to be celebrated, but they provide only a partial picture.

Based on our own analyses of the existing research, we have independently come to the same conclusion that several academics and even the federal government’s General Accountability Office (GAO) have: Claims that drug courts have significantly reduced costs, incarceration or drug use are unsupported by the evidence.
More troubling is that drug courts may actually increase the criminal justice involvement of people with drug problems. The widespread use of incarceration as a sanction in drug courts — for failing a drug test, missing an appointment or having a hard time following the strict rules of the court — means that some participants end up serving more time behind bars than if they had not entered drug court. And some participants may actually face longer sentences when they are ejected from drug court than those who did not enter drug court in the first place (often because they lost the opportunity to plead to a lesser charge).
Even people who are not in drug court may be negatively affected by them, since drug courts have been associated with increased arrests and incarceration in some cases. This is often because law enforcement and others believe people will “get help” if they are arrested. But drug courts have limited capacity and strict eligibility requirements, which means that many of those arrested end up conventionally sentenced.


Treatment through the criminal justice system, including drug courts, is not found to be more effective than treatment in the community — though it is significantly more expensive. A federal study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, for example, showed that people referred to treatment from the criminal justice system do not fare better than those referred through other means (such as a loved one or an employer). And, according to the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, drug courts do not reduce recidivism by even a half a percentage point more than treatment in the community without a judge’s oversight.
More than 1.4 million people are arrested every year simply for possessing a small amount of drugs for personal use — about half for marijuana. Only some of them have a drug problem and need treatment. Even if drug courts were expanded to scale to cover all of the people arrested for a drug law violation, between 500,000 and 1 million people would still be ejected from a drug court and sentenced conventionally every year.
Instead, we need drug courts to focus on more serious law violations that are linked to a drug problem and to expand access to treatment and other health interventions in the community so that they are available when people seek them. About 7.8 million Americans want drug treatment, according to the 2009 U.S. National Survey of Drug Use and Health; this is more than the number of people facing lung, breast and prostate cancer combined. Many people who want treatment can’t access it outside the criminal justice system. This must change.


Margaret Dooley-Sammuli is deputy state director, Southern California, for the Drug Policy Alliance, and authored “Drug Courts Are Not the Answer.”

__________________________________________
All of these far-right solutions to prison via forced labor comes straight from the brutal fascist dictator handbook of MAO and STALIN and will lead to abuses of power and political targeting of RE-EDUCATION.

Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

IAN URBINA and SEAN D. HAMILLFEB. 12, 2009

Hillary Transue was sentenced to three months in juvenile detention for a spoof Web page mocking an assistant principal. Credit Niko J. Kallianiotis for The New York Times
At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.
She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.
“I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. “All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”
The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.
While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.
“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.
The case has shocked Luzerne County, an area in northeastern Pennsylvania that has been battered by a loss of industrial jobs and the closing of most of its anthracite coal mines.
And it raised concerns about whether juveniles should be required to have counsel either before or during their appearances in court and whether juvenile courts should be open to the public or child advocates.


Prosecutors say Judges Michael T. Conahan, and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., above, took kickbacks to send teenagers to detention centers. Credit David Kidwell/Associated Press
If the court agrees to the plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and resign from the bench and bar. They are expected to be sentenced in the next several months. Lawyers for both men declined to comment.
Since state law forbids retirement benefits to judges convicted of a felony while in office, the judges would also lose their pensions.
With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.
They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.
Prosecutors say the judges tried to conceal the kickbacks as payments to a company they control in Florida.
Though he pleaded guilty to the charges Thursday, Judge Ciavarella has denied sentencing juveniles who did not deserve it or sending them to the detention centers in a quid pro quo with the centers.
But Assistant United States Attorney Gordon A. Zubrod said after the hearing that the government continues to charge a quid pro quo.
“We’re not negotiating that, no,” Mr. Zubrod said. “We’re not backing off.”
No charges have been filed against executives of the detention centers. Prosecutors said the investigation into the case was continuing.
For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Judge Ciavarella was unusually harsh. He sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a state rate of 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency made by prosecutors and probation officers.

“The juvenile system, by design, is intended to be a less punitive system than the adult system, and yet here were scores of children with very minor infractions having their lives ruined,” said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.
“There was a culture of intimidation surrounding this judge and no one was willing to speak up about the sentences he was handing down.”
Last year, the Juvenile Law Center, which had raised concerns about Judge Ciavarella in the past, filed a motion to the State Supreme Court about more than 500 juveniles who had appeared before the judge without representation. The court originally rejected the petition, but recently reversed that decision.


The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that children have a constitutional right to counsel. But in Pennsylvania, as in at least 20 other states, children can waive counsel, and about half of the children that Judge Ciavarella sentenced had chosen to do so. Only Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina require juveniles to have representation when they appear before judges.
Clay Yeager, the former director of the Office of Juvenile Justice in Pennsylvania, said typical juvenile proceedings are kept closed to the public to protect the privacy of children.
“But they are kept open to probation officers, district attorneys, and public defenders, all of whom are sworn to protect the interests of children,” he said. “It’s pretty clear those people didn’t do their jobs.”
On Thursday in Federal District Court in Scranton, more than 80 people packed every available seat in the courtroom. At one point, as Assistant United States Attorney William S. Houser explained to Judge Edwin M. Kosik that the government was willing to reach a plea agreement with the men because the case involved “complex charges that could have resulted in years of litigation,” one man sitting in the audience said “bull” loud enough to be heard in the courtroom.
One of the parents at the hearing was Susan Mishanski of Hanover Township.
Her son, Kevin, now 18, was sentenced to 90 days in a detention facility last year in a simple assault case that everyone had told her would result in probation, since Kevin had never been in trouble and the boy he hit had only a black eye.
“It’s horrible to have your child taken away in shackles right in front of you when you think you’re going home with him,” she said. “It was nice to see them sitting on the other side of the bench.”

_________________________________________
The far-right see controlling behavior as PHARMA----the left see integrating behavior and tolerance of differences as the solution.  As CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA FAR-RIGHT garner control they are increasingly using drugs as the solution to behavior and broadening what bad behavior means.  As I said Affordable Care Act makes using PHARMA the first approach as the cheapest route to health care and behavior control and has even taken away an individual's right to refuse to be medicated THIS IS SERIOUS CIVIL RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES VIOLATIONS. 

DON'T WORRY SAY FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS----THE HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES COMES ONLY TO ACCUMULATING EXTREME WEALTH.

All the while far-right 1% Wall STreet global corporate neo-liberals are trying to make all these policies look as though they are coming from DEMOCRATS---JUST AS NOW THEY WILL PRETEND LIBERTARIAN MARXISM IS LEFT-LEANING COMMUNISM.

We have watched these few decades as PHARMA was the answer to school behaviors---now they are super-sizing when and how PHARMA are given and tying it to our prison/jail policy.


PA juvenile offenders given psychiatric drugs at high rates


Psychiatric drugs flow at the state-operated secure youth correctional facilities, where chronic and violent juvenile offenders are sent. Are they drugged into behaving?

By Halle Stockton | PublicSource | Oct. 25, 2015


It’s the end of the line for these kids. They’ve fallen through every safety net, and they keep making the same mistakes or more violent ones.
The kids — nearly all black or white teenage boys — are sent hours away from their families to youth correctional facilities, sterile lock-downs surrounded by barbed wire or cabins so far out in the wilderness they’re considered secure even without a fence.

They are the toughest kids in the juvenile justice system. And, in some ways, the most vulnerable.
In the months they spend at correctional facilities, they receive mood-altering psychiatric medications at strikingly high rates, particularly antipsychotic drugs that expose them to significant health risks.
Psychiatric medications are prescribed to manage mental health and behavioral symptoms; antipsychotics are a type of psychiatric medicine approved to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and irritability with autism.
Kids are more vulnerable to the severe side effects of antipsychotics — rapid weight gain and diabetes among them — yet doctors and juvenile justice experts told PublicSource they’re confident the drugs are being used off-label in the state facilities to induce sleep or to reduce anxiety or aggression.
Some child advocates refer to this use as ‘chemical restraint.’


Over a seven-year period, enough antipsychotics were ordered to treat one-third of the confined youth, on average, at any given time, according to a PublicSource analysis of drug purchasing information obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, which operates the youth correctional facilities.
Only 1 to 2 percent of kids in the U.S. take antipsychotics.
“Most of antipsychotic use is likely for sedation and behavioral control” in Pennsylvania’s youth correctional facilities, said Dr. Mark Olfson of the Columbia University Medical Center. Olfson is a leading research psychiatrist who reviewed the data PublicSource provided. “The new findings will hopefully spur much-needed institutional reforms.”
Thousands of at-risk kids lived in six state-operated youth development centers and forestry camps from 2007 through 2013. Within the razor wire — or dense tree lines in forestry camps — psychiatric medications are flowing, despite the potential consequences to the developing brains and bodies of kids.
Have you spent time in a Pennsylvania youth correctional facility as a resident or employee? Do you know someone who has?Get in touch:
hstockton@publicsource.org
412.315.0263
See a list of the state-run facilities >>


A recent study showed about one-fifth of foster-care youth in Pennsylvania were taking antipsychotics in 2012 — a finding that sounded alarm bells for the Department of Human Services (DHS), which commissioned the report.
The secretary of the department called the rates among foster children “disturbing” and “unacceptable.”


PublicSource’s look at the issue for the state’s most troubled delinquent young people showed even more widespread prescribing, yet Human Services officials said they aren’t encountering the same issues in the juvenile justice system.
The agency communicated with PublicSource almost entirely through email with responses approved by its legal department.
The department had weeks, and sometimes months, to respond to questions. Requests to interview DHS officials went unanswered for six weeks; an interview with Secretary Ted Dallas was scheduled and then abruptly cancelled. PublicSource shared its findings with the agency on Oct. 6.
The state also would not release the names of the doctors who are contracted to care for and prescribe to the youth, saying that it would compromise the safety of doctors if the facility residents had personal information on them.


A greater mental health need

Most of the kids are sent to the facilities after they’ve committed assaults, thefts and burglaries, or crimes related to guns and drugs. It is common for them to come from unstable homes or to roam with other kids who have had brushes with the law.
At its root, it is often a traumatic experience, one witnessed or committed, that drives their actions and can mimic mental illness.


State-operated youth development centers and forestry camps:

• North Central Secure Treatment Unit
• Loysville Youth Development Center
• Cresson Secure Treatment Unit
• Youth Forestry Camp #3
• South Mountain Secure Treatment Unit
• Youth Forestry Camp #2

Read more about these facilities >>
PublicSource was not granted access to the facilities — one of which closed on Sept. 30. The centers are described by those who have visited as plain, with more the feeling of a hospital than a jail, but still with a maze of locked doors.
The state juvenile justice system takes youth ages 10 to 21; the state facilities saw youth 12 to 20 in the seven years studied.
For an average of seven to eight months, they’re kept on a strict schedule for meals, schooling on the premises, and some socializing in common areas with TVs and computers.


DHS Spokeswoman Kait Gillis wrote in an email that the department provides individualized health care to the juveniles with a multidisciplinary team that regularly monitors the effects of psychiatric medications, also called psychotropics.
She wrote that 44 percent of 266 residents in the facilities on Sept. 30 had a psychotropic medication prescribed by a psychiatrist. The department conducted a manual calculation on that day shortly after receiving additional questions from PublicSource on the matter.
Many enter the facilities with a psychotropic prescription, Gillis added, and some can be weaned off as they make progress with other non-drug therapies.
“The protocols we have in place actually lead to a reduction or termination of medication when possible,” she wrote. However, the state did not share whether it has any policies or controls on prescribing.
The department could not say how many enter with such a prescription, and the invoices provided by the department did not link the medications to specific cases or diagnoses because of privacy concerns.
PublicSource consulted several healthcare professionals and researchers to review the data, which took two years to obtain and turn into a usable database.
While the experts did see red flags pointing to potentially excessive or inappropriate prescribing in the state facilities, justice-involved youth are known to have a greater mental health need than the general population. Studies and experts estimate that between 50 percent and 75 percent have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder.

KEEP IN MIND SIMPLE DEPRESSION IS THE MOST COMMON PSYCHIATRIC DISORDER IN MANY PEOPLE.

However, not every disorder calls for a medication and certainly not an antipsychotic.


Psychiatric medications can quickly improve an adolescent's’ quality of life by alleviating depression or creating a clear mind. But many believe some prescribers overuse psychotropics, deploying them as a ‘silver bullet,’ rather than addressing underlying issues.


“The great concern among children’s advocates is that ... too often the medications are used to the benefit of the institution to control behavior in ways that are not appropriate,” said Robert Schwartz, co-founder and recently retired executive director of the Juvenile Law Center, a national public-interest law firm based in Philadelphia that brought the notorious “Kids for Cash” scandal to light in 2008.


The scandal netted two judges guilty of taking $2.6 million in kickbacks to send youth to private for-profit centers and created demand for reforms to policies affecting youth in the state’s juvenile courts. Tools were adopted in many counties to assess mental health upon arrival at juvenile justice facilities, and the state began unshackling kids in courtrooms.
Quick fixAntipsychotics, the most used of the psychotropics in the state facilities, are extremely powerful and effective.
That’s why they’re used so often in crisis.
The drugs are tranquilizing, instilling a quick calm. Some equate that calm to a stupor.
Dr. Terry Lee, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who treats residents of a Washington state-run secure juvenile correctional facility, said most antipsychotics used in correctional facilities are given to control disruptive behavior, like outbursts, aggression and breaking the rules.
“There aren’t that many kids in juvenile justice facilities who are psychotic,” he said.


Judge Kathryn M. Hens-Greco, who has heard delinquency cases for five years in the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, said she can’t remember ever sending a kid diagnosed with schizophrenia or autism to one of the state facilities.
Some youth with behavioral health disorders, Olfson said, are likely receiving antipsychotics inappropriately.
“If they have schizophrenia or bipolar, hopefully they are not here but in psychiatric hospitals getting rehabilitated,” he said. “I think their need for antipsychotics should make them ineligible for these facilities.”


Video by Ryan Loew / PublicSourceThe American Psychiatric Association says poor and minority kids are more likely to receive antipsychotics for off-label reasons. The PolicyLab, a research entity of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, found 5 percent of Medicaid-enrolled children in Pennsylvania were taking antipsychotics in 2012.
It was prescribing among the state’s Medicaid-enrolled foster children driving that rate.


Antipsychotics are quick to stabilize, but can also cause rapid weight gain that can lead to diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular problems. It may lead to brain shrinkage and a shorter lifespan.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that the brains of youth offenders are still developing when they took life sentences without parole off the table; so too, experts say, should state officials and doctors recognize they are taking a young person’s future into their hands when they prescribe psychotropics — for better or worse.
Dr. Christoph Correll, a psychiatrist and scientist, published a study in 2009 linking antipsychotic use and weight gain in youth. The kids studied gained 10 to 20 pounds in fewer than three months, he said.
“Children and adolescents seem to be more vulnerable to these side effects,” he said. “We need to improve the behaviors of the mentally ill with education and healthy lifestyle and go to low-risk interventions first.”


Gillis, the DHS spokeswoman, wrote that all residents of Pennsylvania youth correctional facilities get a mental-health screening within one hour of arrival. The kids are further assessed by social workers, nurses, physicians, psychological services associates, counselors and psychiatrists, she wrote.
Other therapies offered include cognitive behavioral therapy, individual and group counseling and programs for anger management and substance abuse issues, she wrote.
“There are unique challenges as many of the residents have not had consistent access to preventive care or to a medical provider,” Gillis wrote.
In the state facilities, the youth are provided a bill of rights, 22 liberties that include the rights to receive appropriate behavioral health care and to be free from excessive medication. The state contracts with the Mental Health Association in Pennsylvania to send in youth advocates. If medication questions come up, advocates refer them to a nurse.
Gillis wrote that kids prescribed certain psychiatric medications are monitored regularly through therapy, blood work and physical exams, and monthly updates are provided to the psychiatrist.
At the Washington state facility in which Lee works, he developed and implemented psychiatric practice guidelines. The guidelines include requirements to generally limit antipsychotic prescriptions to youth with psychotic and bipolar disorders; to prioritize skills training and non-drug therapy for disruptive behavior; and, when prescribing for sleep, to first use medications with more benign side effects, like melatonin or diphenhydramine (Benadryl).


Lee published a study on Oct. 1 in the journal Psychiatric Services that compared psychiatric medication costs and aggression levels at three secure juvenile facilities, including where he works.
The study, spanning 2003 to 2012, shows Lee’s facility with psychiatric practice guidelines reduced its costs of psychotropic drugs by 26 percent, and incidents of aggression remained level. Costs for facilities without the guidelines doubled, and aggression levels increased, Lee said.
Psychotropic drugs dominated the medication budgets at the Pennsylvania youth centers, accounting for more than $3.4 million of the $5.5 million spent over seven years, according to the PublicSource analysis.

The state and counties pay for medications prescribed to residents of youth correctional facilities because Medicaid benefits are terminated or suspended when a juvenile is sent to one.
Seroquel (quetiapine) and Abilify (aripiprazole) — both antipsychotics — were two of the most ordered medications. About $2.2 million was spent on these two drugs alone.


Rx pad

There has been no thorough examination in the state or nation on the prescribing of psychiatric medications to delinquent youth — an irony considering the momentous trend of jails and prisons, both adult and juvenile, filling the role of psychiatric facility.

With fewer resources and less training to cope with aggression, the mental health system over time has lost its ability to handle youthful offenders, and correctional facilities have become the default, said Ned Loughran, executive director of the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators.
“The catch 22 is the more the youth correctional facilities respond to that and develop specialized programs because they have to deal with the youth, the more the courts are going to use them,” he said.
The majority of youth offenders in Pennsylvania are in private facilities. They are for the teens with lesser crimes, fewer problems and shorter stays. The chronic or violent offenders go to the youth development centers and forestry camps.
The facilities have adapted, contracting with medical professionals who know how to treat depression, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with medications that also fall under the umbrella of psychotropics.


In addition to antipsychotic use in the six state facilities:

• The antidepressants ordered were sufficient to treat more than 20 percent of the confined youth, on average, at any given time over the seven years studied. That includes the drugs Prozac and Paxil, which have been shown to increase suicidal behaviors in adolescents.
• Mood stabilizers, like lithium used to treat manic episodes and bipolar disorder, were the next most used of the five drug classes analyzed. The prescriptions were sufficient to treat an average of 14 percent of residents at any given time.
• Psychiatrists were surprised by the levels of anti-ADHD medications, which were ordered about one-third as often as antipsychotics. ADHD is likely one of the most prevalent disorders in the facilities, experts said. The orders were sufficient to treat an average of 9 percent of the youth at any given time.
• Medications to combat anxiety were the least ordered of all the psychotropic classes, sufficient to treat an average of 6 percent of the juveniles at any given time.

It is also possible that some juveniles receive more than one psychiatric medication. It’s called polypharmacy.
If one drug starts losing its power, the meds are often layered with others.
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says polypharmacy should be generally avoided.
Once a medication is on the market, a doctor has free rein to prescribe it for all kinds of symptoms. Sometimes the evidence supports its use, and sometimes not.
Correll, a professor at Hofstra University’s School of Medicine, advises using interventions with fewer side effects and rarely, if ever, trying antipsychotics off-label for sleeplessness, anxiety or ADHD. Alternatives can include anything from changing diet and sleep habits, to counseling, to other medication with fewer risks.


Finding clarity

Jennifer Drake is the national director of behavioral health services for Youth Advocate Programs (YAP), a Harrisburg-based nonprofit that provides community-based services to youth in 18 states and Washington, D.C., many of whom have been placed in corrections or foster care.
YAP has programs in 31 Pennsylvania counties and the city of Philadelphia.
Drake remembered a teenage boy who had experienced multiple placements, with medications layered at every stop.
When he returned home, YAP’s psychiatrist diagnosed him with depression. The boy was taken off antipsychotics and anti-ADHD drugs in favor of a mild antidepressant and counseling.
First, his headaches went away and he began to lose weight, she said. Then he started to break out of his shell and have conversations.

“I think all of us believe medication should only be one part of a child’s treatment,” Drake said. “They are certainly lifesaving and life-changing and many kids need them, but they shouldn't be the first line of treatment or the only treatment.”

____________________________________________

OH, THIS WAS WHAT OBAMA'S EMPHASIS ON DRUG AND ALCOHOL TREATMENT AND RELEASING THESE PRISONERS FROM PRISON-----
It is indeed the same program because Chinese prison policies have always come from FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS.

All this RE-EDUCATION at the same time our PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION is being dismantled. Don't worry they say IT'S ALL ABOUT JOBS, JOBS, JOBS    

'Many of China's re-education through labor camps, instead of being abolished in line with a ruling Communist Party announcement this month, are being turned into compulsory drug rehabilitation centers where inmates can be incarcerated for two years or more without trial'.


Here in Baltimore Baltimore City Hall and Baltimore's Maryland Assembly pols passed the laws to do the same to Baltimore citizens------now a police officers with a social worker can come to a home and take a citizen they deem needing drug/alcohol treatment

'Police can sentence drug offenders without trial to two years or more of compulsory rehabilitation, which can include forced labor, according to the law'.


A jail by another name: China labor camps now drug detox centers


KUNMING, China | By John Ruwitch
Iron wire fencing is seen outside a labour camp in Kunming, Yunnan province, November 22, 2013.
Reuters/John Ruwitch


Li Zhongying was freed from a Chinese labor camp ahead of schedule in September because, guards told her, the government was scrapping 're-education through labor', a heavily criticized penal system created in the 1950s.
Several hundred other inmates were not so lucky, she said. Like Li, they were held without trial and forced to do factory work under what she called "cruel" conditions. They remained because they were drug offenders, she told Reuters.
Many of China's re-education through labor camps, instead of being abolished in line with a ruling Communist Party announcement this month, are being turned into compulsory drug rehabilitation centers where inmates can be incarcerated for two years or more without trial.


Human rights activists and freed inmates said drug offenders were still being forced to do factory work, as has been the practice under the re-education through labor system, colloquially known as 'laojiao'.


New York-based Human Rights Watch estimates more than 60 percent of the 160,000 people in labor camps at the start of the year were there for drug offenses. Those people were unlikely to see any change in their treatment, it said.
"The drug detox people are doing exactly the same work," said Li, who spent 19 months in a labor camp in Kunming, the capital of southern Yunnan province.
Police caught Li in Beijing early last year trying to petition the government over a grievance that dated back to the mid-1990s. They sent her home to Yunnan, where she was sentenced without trial to 21 months.
Li, speaking from Beijing, said she worked at a biscuit factory inside the camp for up to 15 hours a day.
A production line manager, speaking to Reuters outside the facility on a dusty road near Kunming airport late last week, said the inmates left inside were undergoing drug rehab. Among the items they made were handicrafts, including embroidered items, said the manager, declining to be identified.

SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT


China's re-education through labor law, in place since 1957, empowered police to detain petty criminals for up to four years without trial.
Many of the camps have housed drug rehab centers since mid-2008, when a new Anti-Drug Law came into force. Police can sentence drug offenders without trial to two years or more of compulsory rehabilitation, which can include forced labor, according to the law.
Labor camps across China began changing their names to drug centers earlier this year, after a surprise announcement in January from Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu that the network of 350 camps would be scrapped.
They also took it as a cue to start releasing some people who were there for non-drug offences. The camps also hold petty criminals, prostitutes, petitioners and members of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, rights activists say.
Government websites and state media have reported steps to change the names of camps to drug rehab centers or to re-train staff this year in provinces including Guangdong, Hainan, Henan, Jiangsu, Jilin, Liaoning, Sichuan, Yunnan and Zhejiang, as well as in Shanghai and Beijing.
The Communist Party's policymaking Central Committee announced the formal abolition of the re-education through labor camp system this month as part of a series of sweeping societal and economic reforms.
Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said he believed the "great majority" of forced labor camps would keep functioning as drug rehab centers.
The shift did not represent a change of "direction or principles" on the part of the party, added Jiang Tianyong, a human rights lawyer in Beijing.
"It's wrong to say it has no meaning, but it's too optimistic to think it will change a lot," he said.
"This is how power in this country operates ... They can't use re-education through labor camps to control people, so they just change the name and control people."


Rights groups have said conditions in labor camps are terrible and that detainees frequently had to do hard labor with minimal health and safety precautions.
Despite long-standing international criticism of the camps, many Chinese are largely oblivious to them because many of those who are locked up are poor and on the fringes of society.
The party this month said it saw the scrapping of the re-education through labor regime as an improvement to the justice system that would help it regain credibility with the populace and better protect human rights.
Neither the Public Security Ministry nor the Justice Ministry responded to questions from Reuters about the transformation of the camps into drug rehab centers.


DRUG ADDICTS STAY BEHIND


In Shanghai, shiny metal characters saying "Shanghai No.4 Re-education Through Labor Facility" still adorn the gate, but the last inmates were released months ago and the compound is now a drug rehab centre, said a guard at the facility.
"The official documents, everything, has already been changed," said the guard, who did not give his name.
On September 14, Su Yuhong left the Masanjia forced labor camp in northern Liaoning province.
Masanjia made international headlines last year when a woman in the U.S. state of Oregon found a note in a Halloween decoration kit from Kmart that was supposedly written by a camp inmate who claimed to have played a part in making the product.
"Only the drug addicts were left," Su said by telephone from the city of Shenyang, where she now lives.
By mid-June, the 21st Century Business Herald newspaper quoted Justice Ministry researcher Wang Gongyi as saying there were only 50,000 labor camp inmates left in the country, compared with hundreds of thousands in compulsory drug rehab centers.
Beyond drug centers, Chinese authorities still have many ways to detain people without trial, rights activists said.
Police can detain sex workers, for example, under a mechanism known as "custody and education".
The terminology even appears to be interchangeable.
An article in July on the Public Security Ministry website said prostitutes in Zhejiang province had been sentenced to "re-education through labor at a custody and education facility".
Jiang, the lawyer, said police had used other means to curtail the freedom of some, including Falun Gong adherents and repeat petitioners.
The number of court convictions of such people was on the rise, as was the use of 'rule of law study classes', which amounted to unlawful detention, he said.
"So long as (the authorities) feel a need to maintain stability, simply abolishing laojiao will not solve the problem," he said.