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August 31st, 2018

8/31/2018

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Our national media and global banking 1% pols continually create talking points about EDUCATION REFORM today being tied to more efficient pathways to actually going from school to job.  This is the reason the far-right wing has used these few decades for dismantling a highly functioning public K-university structure.  The articles we shared yesterday and reality shows the goals are opposite.  These reforms are staging our US 99% to spend tens of thousands of dollars on degree pathways which are deliberately being undermined as future employment.

What was 300 years to a sure pathway to employment at strong wages in US has now been made into a criminal enterprise sacking and looting our US citizens' wealth and throwing them into deep poverty with large student loan debt and no pathway to a job.

All of this was the MASTER PLAN from REAGAN/CLINTON era 1980-90s by global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS to capture all public wealth and kill all pathways to employment.  Today, our young adults and parents are being made to fear incurring higher education debt feeling the US system does not lead to employment and higher wages.

CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA global banking neo-liberalism these few decades brought these FAR-RIGHT WING EXTREME WEALTH EXTREME POVERTY policies while Clinton/Obama PRETENDED to be 'left' social progressives helping labor and justice 99% WE THE PEOPLE.

Obama and Clinton neo-liberals as well created a tiered-level of student debt forgiveness via sending our new college grads into NGOs also PRETENDING to be 'left' where our public university grads are captured far longer to these FREE LABOR APPRENTICESHIPS to pay student debt----instead of entering workforce with strong developed nation salaries.



The FAKE OUR REVOLUTION global banking players like Warren, Gabbard, Turner, Ellison, Sanders, Stein pretending to address these student loan debt problems are actually MOVING FORWARD the same K-CAREER APPRENTICESHIP pathways started during Clinton era.




The Incredible, Rage-Inducing Inside Story of America’s Student Debt Machine
Why is the nation’s flagship loan forgiveness program failing the people it’s supposed to help?


By Ryann Liebenthal; Photographs by Zach GrossSeptember/October 2018 Issue



When Leigh McIlvaine first learned that her student loan debt could be forgiven, she was thrilled. In 2008, at age 27, she’d earned a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Minnesota. She’d accrued just under $70,000 in debt, though she wasn’t too worried—that’s what it took to invest in her future. But graduating at the height of the recession, she found that the kind of decent-paying public-sector job she’d anticipated pursuing was suddenly closed off by budget and hiring freezes. She landed a gig at a nonprofit in Washington, DC, earning a $46,000 salary. Still, she was happy to live on that amount if it was the cost of doing the work she believed in.


At the time, she paid about $350 each month to stay in a decrepit house with several roommates, more than $100 for utilities, and $60 for her cellphone bill. On top of that, her loan bill averaged about $850 per month. “Rent was hard enough to come up with,” she recalled. Then one day while researching her options, she read about something called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) plan. At the time, Congress had just come up with a couple of options for borrowers with federal loans. They could get on an income-based repayment plan and have their student loans expunged after 25 years. Or, for borrowers working public service jobs—as social workers, nurses, nonprofit employees—there was another possibility: They could have their debt forgiven after making 10 years’ worth of on-time payments.



The PSLF program, backed in the Senate by Ted Kennedy and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, was the first of its kind, and when people talk about “student loan forgiveness,” they’re usually talking about PSLF. It was implemented to address low salaries in public service jobs, where costly degrees are the price of entry but wages often aren’t high enough to pay down debts. A Congressional Budget Office report last year found that public-sector workers with a professional degree or doctorate earn 24 percent less than they would in the private sector. In Massachusetts, a public defender in 2014 made just $40,000, only about $1,000 more than the court’s janitor. Meanwhile, 85 percent of public-interest attorneys in 2015 owed at least $50,000 in federal student loans, according to one study. More than half owed at least $100,000. According to a 2012 study, 65 percent of newly hired nonprofit workers had student debt, and 30 percent owed more than $50,000. In order to keep people working as public defenders, or rural doctors or human rights activists, something had to be done. PSLF was an attempt at a fix.

LEIGH McILVAINE: University of New Mexico (bachelor’s, 2006); University of Minnesota (master’s, 2008); $70,000 owed at graduation; $50,000 paid back so far; $410 paid per month, on average; 12 months of delayed forgiveness because of FedLoan errors; $70,000 still owed today



The program was by no means a handout. Successful PSLF participants, according to one estimate, pay back as much as 91 percent of their original loan amount, so enrollees primarily save on interest. The program’s appeal was that it offered a clear path for people who struggled to pay back loans, or struggled to envision how they would ever pay them off without abandoning public service jobs for higher-paid positions elsewhere. For McIlvaine, who dreamed of working to make cities more livable, PSLF was the only way she could imagine paying off her debt. When she sent in her first payment in the fall of 2009, she felt like she’d put herself on track to get to “a place where the debt would eventually be lifted.”



Several companies, including one called FedLoan Servicing, contracted with the Education Department to handle loan repayment, and until 2012, when the government assigned all PSLF accounts to FedLoan, borrowers had to keep track of their progress toward forgiveness. At the time she began paying into the program, McIlvaine wasn’t too perturbed that there was no official way to confirm her enrollment, no email or letter that said she had been “accepted.” She trusted the Education Department to run the program effectively and followed its parameters, taking care to send in the yearly tax forms that proved her eligibility and always submitting her payments on time.



Everything seemed fine for the first few years—McIlvaine initially made payments through an Education Department website, and then, as the department increasingly outsourced its loans, hers were transferred to a company called MOHELA. But once FedLoan took over, things quickly started to go awry. While FedLoan was sorting out the transfer, her loans were put into forbearance, an option usually reserved for people having difficulty making payments; during a forbearance, any progress toward forgiveness stalls, and loans balloon with interest. Then the company failed to put several of her loans on an income-based plan—so her payments briefly shot up, she says. And when McIlvaine submitted her tax information, she says FedLoan took months to process the paperwork—while she waited, the company again put her into what it called “administrative forbearance,” so none of the payments she made during this period counted either. (McIlvaine requested a forbearance at least once, after turning in late renewal paperwork.)



McIlvaine initially hoped these problems were just “hiccups,” but they kept piling up. And when she tried to figure out what was going on, she says, FedLoan’s call center “loan counselors” brushed the whole thing off as an inconsequential administrative oversight. Astonishingly, the cycle would repeat over the next four years.



Despite these frustrations, McIlvaine kept diligently sending in her checks. In January 2016, she took advantage of a new program introduced by President Barack Obama that helped lower her monthly bill, and when she did, her loans were again inexplicably put into forbearance. On top of that, four months later, as she was trying to save for her wedding, FedLoan sent her a bill for $1,600, more than $1,300 above her monthly payment amount. When she phoned the company in a panic, they told her the bill was an administrative glitch and said not to worry about it; they’d sort it out. Warily, she accepted—after all, there wasn’t much else she could do.



In August 2016, McIlvaine was offered a job at Mercy Corps, a nonprofit in Portland, Oregon, which came with a $10,000 raise and great benefits—the extra security she believed would allow her to start a family. But Mercy Corps required a credit check, and McIlvaine discovered that FedLoan had never actually dealt with that $1,600 bill, instead reporting it as 90 days past due and plunging her previously excellent credit score to an abysmal 550. When she called FedLoan in tears, she recalls, she was treated dismissively and told to “pay more attention” to her loans—and again the only option offered to her was to take an administrative forbearance while the company sorted out the issue. Ultimately she got the job, but only after she lodged a formal complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency created during the Obama era, which prompted FedLoan to send her a letter in October 2016 claiming the company had fixed the issue and that her credit had been restored. “But in true FedLoan Servicing style,” she told me, “they only contacted two of the three credit bureaus.” It took several more months to fix her score with the third bureau, Equifax.

Listen to author Ryann Liebanthal talk about how debt forgiveness can go horribly wrong on this episode of the Mother Jones Podcast.
The Mother Jones Podcast


America's Rage-Inducing Student Debt Machine

00:00 / 22:16
If not for FedLoan’s errors and delays, McIlvaine estimates, her loans would be eligible for forgiveness as soon as 2020. But instead, in the nine years she’s been participating in PSLF, months of payments haven’t been counted toward her 10-year requirement, ultimately delaying the date of her forgiveness by at least a year. All the while, although she’s been making payments of between $300 and $450 a month, her total debt has not gone down. After nearly 100 payments, she still owes the entire amount she initially borrowed.



FedLoan declined to comment on McIlvaine’s tribulations. But as complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and lawsuits against the Education Department and FedLoan pile up, she’s hardly alone. In 2017, the bureau issued a report excoriating FedLoan for mismanaging PSLF, misleading borrowers, and losing track of payments. The previous year, the American Bar Association had filed suit against the Education Department for reneging on its own rules about how the program was supposed to work and who was eligible for forgiveness. Then, in August 2017, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey sued FedLoan on behalf of the state’s borrowers, alleging it had overcharged them and bilked them out of payments. And just this January, a set of borrowers filed a class-action suit against the company for repeatedly putting them into needless forbearances that delayed their forgiveness.



A decade after McIlvaine and scores of others began paying into the program, many are only barely closer to their goal of being debt-free. And some are even more in debt than when they started.Now, the Trump administration has begun disassembling one of the only checks on companies like FedLoan, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, all while arguing that these companies are off-limits to state attorneys general like Healey—essentially trying to give them legal protection.



“We’ve seen an industry that’s really been given a pass by the DeVos administration,” Healey told me, referring to Trump’s education secretary. “That’s why you see Betsy DeVos clean house and bring into the Department of Ed lobbyists and executives from the for-profit schools industry, from the loan-servicing industry. They’re the ones who are attempting now to rewrite all the rules. And the rules and the policies of the department favor corporations and furthering the bottom line of executives at the expense of students.”


Meanwhile, in early June, Republican legislators were trying to find votes for a sweeping and massively unpopular higher-education bill called PROSPER that would get rid of many grant programs as well as loan subsidies and PSLF. Trump’s 2018 and 2019 budgets also proposed axing the PSLF program. Congress has so far rejected the idea, but if the efforts succeed they would remove what was a very small sliver of hope for a generation underwater.



October 2017 should have been a moment for celebration for those sunk by debt—it was the first time a cohort of PSLF participants, after 10 years of payments, could be forgiven. Yet of almost 900,000 people who have submitted at least one payment to the PSLF program and FedLoan since 2012, the Education Department expects fewer than 1,000 to be forgiven by the end of its fiscal year. The reasons for these astonishingly dismal statistics are myriad, but one fact is clear: A decade after McIlvaine and scores of others began paying into the program, many are only barely closer to their goal of being debt-free. And some are even more in debt than when they started.


Today, FedLoan services about a third of all federal student debt, and last year the company took home $195 million from the Education Department. But for years, there were reasons to doubt the company’s competency to administer such a large portion of the government’s loan portfolio.


To understand how FedLoan grew so powerful, you have to go back to the 1960s. At the time, about a quarter of high school students dropped out, while half of those who did graduate went on to college. To boost those numbers, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Higher Education Act in 1965. The bill came along at a moment when states were creating their own institutions to promote higher-­education access, including the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), which would eventually branch off and create FedLoan. It was a recipe that we still rely on today—the federal government provides loans to students across the country, and state governments and other agencies like PHEAA fill in the funding gaps. “When you look into the faces of your students and your children and your grandchildren,” Johnson said, “tell them that the leadership of your country believes it is the obligation of your nation to provide and permit and assist every child born in these borders to receive all the education that he can take.”


But Johnson’s student aid program immediately fell short of his lofty aims. Over the next four decades, it shifted from a model relying on tax dollars to provide a public good into a loan-centered system that viewed education as a “private responsibility and risk”—and student borrowers as sources of profit, says Deanne Loonin, an author and attorney at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School.


Johnson had wanted to create a national scholarship fund for students—like a universal GI Bill—but Congress told him it would be too expensive. So he struck a compromise with Republicans: He would supplement federal funds with loans doled out by private banks, which in turn would receive subsidies from the government, ensuring they would get their money back if a borrower skipped out on the debt. To shore up its insurance program, the feds partnered with dozens of nonprofits and state agencies, including PHEAA. The government would pay out 1 percent of each loan an agency managed. And if borrowers did stop paying, PHEAA and the other institutions would reimburse the lending bank and then act as collection agencies—pocketing collection fees to the tune of 16 cents on the dollar.


Meanwhile, as demand for higher education grew, so did college costs, while incomes didn’t keep pace. So in 1972, President Richard Nixon did two things:
He expanded a federally funded grant program for low-income students, which became known as the Pell Grant, and he created an entity called Sallie Mae that used Treasury funds to buy up student loans from banks.

_________________________________________________

The FAKE OUR REVOLUTION global banking players like Warren, Gabbard, Turner, Ellison, Sanders, Stein pretending to address these student loan debt problems are actually MOVING FORWARD the same K-CAREER APPRENTICESHIP pathways started during Clinton era.


 Remember last week we discussed a 'failing landlord/tenet tax policy in UK-----that actually was successful since the goal was to kill real estate ownership for landlords------so too this education debt forgiveness was never meant to solve that indebtedness---it was designed to make it worse

'Why is the nation’s flagship loan forgiveness program failing the people it’s supposed to help'?

Our US university executives KNOW these education policy goals -----they say WE DON'T CARE because we work for global corporations and not US public education.  Below we see where the process of US Federal student loans PELL GRANTS which worked for decades providing easily paid student loans at low cost----NIXON creating that global banking 1% SALLIE MAE ----that filled this process with criminality and fraud.  SALLIE MAE is to education student loans what FREDDIE MAC is to FHA housing loans.  Global banking pols subprimed these student loans as they did the subprime housing loans.



'He expanded a federally funded grant program for low-income students, which became known as the Pell Grant, and he created an entity called Sallie Mae'

THE REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE ISSUE ON US STUDENT LOAN FRAUD AND CORRUPTION BY GLOBAL BANKING 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS IS TO END THE PRIVATIZATION OF THESE FEDERAL LOANS---ABOLISH FREDDIE MAC AND SALLIE MAE CONNECTION OF FUNDING TO GLOBAL WALL STREET.

Below we see our good friend BENEDICT ARNOLD-----we discussed his use of fraudulent billions to install DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE here in Baltimore MD----and here we see him using those same fraudulent gains KILLING PUBLIC SCHOOLS with THE CITY FUND.


'Billionaire Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, has joined with billionaire former Enron executive, John Arnold, to launch an aggressive destroy public education (DPE) initiative. They claim to have invested $100 million each to start The City Fund'.




Thomas Ultican: The Destroy Public Education Movement Creates a New Vehicle

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2018 //



Retired physics and math teacher Tom Ultican continues his investigation of the Destroy Public Education movement with this post about a new organization determined to extinguish public education by privatization.


He begins:


'Billionaire Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, has joined with billionaire former Enron executive, John Arnold, to launch an aggressive destroy public education (DPE) initiative. They claim to have invested $100 million each to start The City Fund'.

Neerav Kingsland declares he is the Fund’s Managing Partner and says the fund will help cities across America institute proven school reform successes such as increasing “the number of public schools that are governed by non-profit organizations.”



Ending local control of public schools through democratic means is a priority for DPE forces. In 2017, EdSource reported on Hastings campaign against democracy; writing, “His latest salvo against school boards that many regard as a bedrock of American democracy came last week in a speech he made to the annual conference of The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Washington D.C., attended by about 4,500 enthusiastic charter school advocates, teachers and administrators.”


When announcing the new fund, Kingsland listed fourteen founding members of The City Fund. There is little professional classroom teaching experience or training within the group. Chris Barbic was a Teach for America (TFA) teacher in Houston, Texas for two years. Similarly, Kevin Huffman was also a TFA teacher in Houston for three years. The only other member that may have some education experience is Kevin Shafer. His background is obscure.
The operating structure of the new fund is modeled after a law firm. Six of the fourteen founding members are lawyers: Gary Borden; David Harris; Kevin Huffman; Neerav Kingsland; Jessica Pena and Kameelah Shaheed-Diallo.


Ready to Pilfer Community Schools and End School Boards


In a 2012 published debate about school reform, Kingsland justified his call for ending democratic control of public education writing,


“I believe that true autonomy can only be achieved by government relinquishing its power of school operation. I believe that well regulated charter and voucher markets – that provide educators with public funds to operate their own schools – will outperform all other vehicles of autonomy in the long-run. In short, autonomy must be real autonomy: government operated schools that allow “site level decision making” feels more Orwellian than empowering – if we believe educators should run schools, let’s let them run schools.”


This is a belief in “the invisible hand” of markets making superior judgements and private businesses always outperforming government administration. There may be some truth here, but it is certainly not an ironclad law.


Please open the post to read the rest of this shocking story of arrogance and contempt for democracy, as well as many links.


If we lived in a society that took democracy seriously, the perpetrators of the City Fund would be ridiculed as agents of plutocracy.

____________________________________________


You betcha! Benedict Arnold and his global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS KNIGHTS OF MALTA meets TRIBE OF JUDAH installing more MOVING FORWARD sacking and looting far-right wing policies


'Ready to Pilfer Community Schools and End School Boards'



THE CITY FUND-------is a far-right wing global banking 1% with goals of indeed sacking and looting all future funds designated for our public K-12 under the guise of helping PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Below we see our same Baltimore City Council-----led by the same City Council President Jack Young and Baltimore City Mayor PUGH championed by global banking Baltimore Development FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT social progressive groups ------installing BENEDICT ARNOLD'S THE CITY FUND pretending it is about assuring funding for our local public schools.  Remember, these same global banking 5% freemason/Greek player pols did the same for AFFORDABLE HOUSING----they are creating TRUSTS to replace what used to be Federal and State funding for low-income housing and public schools tied to FEDERAL equal opportunity and access civil rights.  When we allow our city/state revenues to be tied to TRUSTS-----our 99% WE THE PEOPLE lose all control of where these funds go----those appointed to TRUST BOARDS will always be global banking players.

Here we see just one of global banking Baltimore Development FAKE social progressive groups PRETENDING this TRUST----which is the same as ARNOLD'S CITY FUND-----is good for our 99% Baltimore citizens.

This # FUND THE TRUST working for global 1% is BENEDICT ARNOLD'S -----'THE CITY TRUST'.

'These are referred to as the “Sundry Trusts,” each maintained separately and administered according to the terms of the benefactor'.



None of the low-income and poor citizens in this photo understand they are supporting FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING 1% policies with goals of killing 99% of Baltimore citizens black, white, and brown---in both HOUSING AND EDUCATION.



#FundTheTrust!

From the launch of our 20/20 Campaign in January 2016, through the collection of 18,000 signatures that summer to put Question J on the ballot in November and passing with an overwhelming 83% of the vote... every phone call, petition signature, door knocked, community meeting has led us to this moment. Earlier this month, we reached an historic agreement with Baltimore's leadership to put 20 million dollars a year towards creating affordable housing and development without displacement in our city: $20 Million every year to #FundTheTrust!


The Fund The Trust Act will be heard by Councilwoman Middleton's Taxation and Finance Committee on Thursday, September 27th- join us at 10 AM to rally outside of City Hall and at 11 for the hearing! After all our sacrifice to create the AHTF, to influence our City's Budget, and to engage communities around the need to address blight without displacing low-income residents, passing the Fund The Trust Act will be a a decisive step towards a more equitable, accountable, participatory, universal, and transparent city- one that recognizes the power of the people.

OH, REALLY?????????????????



***In advance of the hearing, please call Council President Young to thank him for his hard work and leadership to get us to this moment! His office number is 410-396-4804.***

THU, SEP 27 AT 10 AM
Fund The Trust Rally & Hearing!
Baltimore City Hall · Baltimore

_______________________________________________



Both UNITED WORKERS and BUILD are far-right wing global banking 5% freemason/Greek player NGOs working for Baltimore Development to sell policies that kill our 99% of WE THE BALTIMORE CITIZENS.

THE CITY TRUST discussed in our education posts today is the same as what are called EDUCATION TRUSTS----HOUSING TRUSTS------LAND BANK TRUSTS all of which have goals of taking every control and accountability from our local 99% of citizens and hand all that power to global banking 1%. It is another policy that kills our LOCAL, STATE, AND FEDERAL SOVEREIGNTY.

All these FAKE 'LEFT' GROUPS ARE TIED TO FREEMASON/GREEKS WITH CITIZENS WANTING TO CLIMB TO THAT 5% PLAYER. KNOW WHAT? THAT 5% PLAYER GROUP ARE GOING UNDER THE BUS. WHY NOT FIGHT TO BE AMERICAN CITIZENS INSTEAD?

This is how the FAR-RIGHT WING in US was able to undermine 300 years of American democrat government, civil rights and liberties----which go back centuries more to I AM MAN----AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT.


These are global banking national NGOS pushing policy talking points with goals of killing our 99% WE THE PEOPLE while these groups PRETEND these polices HELP THE POOR.  When our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE and our new to US immigrant citizens join THESE political movements---they are killing their futures----not protesting and marching for GORILLA-IN-THE-ROOM 99% WE THE PEOPLE policies----advancing MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1%.



Our MissionOur Mission Statement:
The Baltimore Educational Scholarship Trust, in partnership with our nineteen independent member schools, recruits and supports through the admissions process academically ambitious, African American students with financial need from the Baltimore area. Once students are enrolled, B.E.S.T. positions them for success through academic preparation, character and leadership development and support programs.





United Workers
August 13 at 1:03 PM ·
Last Friday's historic announcement of city leadership committing to $20 million annually to the affordable housing trust fund was an example of a grassroots movement doing things in a new way - mass participation, transparency and accountability to movement goals #endpoverty #fundthetrust Development without Displacement


BUILD
June 29 ·

One more time, June 6 action, clear video. Thank you Kingdom Life Church!
The Kingdom Life Church
June 29 ·


Al-Rahmah Educational Trust

ASET is an independent 501(3)(c) non-profit organization that was setup to support the future financial needs of Al-Rahmah School & Nursery through the creation of a healthy and sustainable endowment fund.


With all the above outsourcing of 'EDUCATION FUNDING' in Baltimore we KNOW 99% of Baltimore citizens have the WORST PUBLIC SCHOOL system in America.  All of what was Federal K-12 school funding was misappropriated to these kinds of freemasonry groups and missing in action just as happens to our state education funding all tied to TRUST FUNDS.

None of the FAKE DEMOCRATIC candidates will FIX this education robbery----they are the same global banking 5% players as GOV HOGAN. MARYLAND has a long history of sending Federal and state funding to TRUSTS where all is used as PAY-TO-PLAY.



Sean Johnson
Feb 16


After Diverting $1.4 Billion from the Education Trust Fund, Hogan Backs Plan to Fix the Fund

 MSEA’s Up the Street

Chart showing how Gov. Hogan has used the Education Trust Fund shell game to shift $1.4 billion away from education during his time in office. Source: Department of Legislative Services


THIS WEEK IN ANNAPOLIS



Gov. Hogan Backs Fix the Fund, Announces His Own Bill



On Wednesday, Gov. Hogan backed the legislature- and educator-led campaign to Fix the Fund — albeit by introducing his own bill. According to his press conference remarks, his version would merely make it mandatory by law for the governor’s budget proposal to use the Education Trust Fund revenue to increase education funding. His bill aims to avoid the far stronger lockbox that would be created by taking this step by way of a constitutional amendment; leaving the funds susceptible to the same shell game we have seen for years since a governor could “pick the lock” of Hogan’s version of the lockbox whenever they wanted to via the Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act. Finally, his proposal would also send a small portion of the revenue to school construction dollars, leaving less to fill the $2.9 billion annual underfunding gap for operating expenses like educator salaries and staffing increases.
While the governor stole headlines by claiming credit for the idea, he also inadvertently conceded that his own budgets have amounted to a $1.4 billion broken promise. After all, that’s how much more funding would have gone to schools during his time in office had he not raided the Education Trust Fund to plug holes in other parts of his budget proposals.


MSEA released a statement in response, saying in part, “There’s some real hypocrisy in proposing legislation to make you do something you’ve refused to do on your own.” We then called on Gov. Hogan to send the legislature an additional budget — called a supplemental budget — with the $364 million he took away from the Education Trust Fund in his current budget proposal.


Kirwan Preliminary Report Released


The long-awaited Kirwan Commission Preliminary Report was released yesterday following a press conference by legislative leaders and the Commission’s chair, Dr. Brit Kirwan. The report paints a bleak picture of the state of Maryland education based on consultant findings that the average public school is underfunded by $2 million every year.



The Commission wants to address this underfunding by focusing on policy strategies like providing universal access to pre-kindergarten programs, expanding Career and Technical Education (CTE), utilizing the community school model in communities of concentrated poverty, raising teacher salaries, reducing teacher workload, and hiring more mental health professionals.


THESE ARE ALL FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING 1% EDUCATION POLICY GOALS----NOTHING 'LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE' HAPPENING.


Legislative leaders are advancing some small recommendations from the Commission this session in one omnibus bill (HB1415/SB1092). Sponsored by House Speaker Michael Busch (D-Anne Arundel-District 30A) and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, Jr. (D-Calvert, Charles & Prince George’s-District 27), ideas included in the bill include:
· Establish a Career and Technical Education group, composed of individuals with expertise in CTE programs and the needs of the business community to develop rigorous CTE pathways leading to industry-certified credentials.
· Expand the current program of early childhood education by increasing the funding for prekindergarten expansion grants.
· Require MSDE, in collaboration with stakeholders, to develop a comprehensive recruitment program aimed at the top 25% of graduates from high schools (in each school system) to encourage them to consider teaching as a profession.
· Expand and fully fund the Maryland Teaching Fellows Scholarship to provide tuition remission for teachers in return for a commitment to teach in high-needs schools.
· Establish a grant program for jurisdictions or schools with high concentrations of poverty to provide additional academic instruction through after-school and summer programs.

MSEA is planning a march in Annapolis on March 19 called The March to Fix the Fund -- which will focus on asking members of the General Assembly to put a constitutional amendment on the 2018 ballot to ensure casino gaming revenue goes towards increasing education funding. Please RSVP at this link and widely distribute the form to members and community partners.

MSEA KNOWS WE MUST GET RID OF EDUCATION TRUST FUND TO FIX PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING.




_______________________________________________

What BENEDICT ARNOLD'S -----THE CITY TRUST targeting education and schools will do if allowed to MOVE FORWARD is replace the local corruption and criminality of PAY-TO-PLAY FAKE NGOs allowed to pretend to have their own TRUSTS for housing and education------with what will be a GLOBAL BANKING 1% CITY TRUST.  As we see all these CITY TRUST funds are geared to funding only K-career schools that perform well on STOCK MARKET----GREAT SCHOOLS RATING CORPORATIONS.  Of course those RATINGS are CORRUPT towards schools pretending to be 'public' -----making sure the RATINGS and the STOCK MARKET gains go only to those K-career corporate schools tied to global corporate campuses as here in Baltimore all K-career schools are being tied to city center global hedge fund corporation JOHNS HOPKINS.

So, it is a given that JOHNS HOPKINS' corporate K-career schools once our US PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM ----will be RATED HIGH----will earn great profits----and the CITY TRUST created by JACK YOUNG AND BALTIMORE CITY HALL will only fund those global corporate campus schools.

Below we see national media using THINK TANK talking points still calling THIRD WAY CLINTON NEO-LIBERALISM-----LEFT CENTER.


“Our model is probably different from the model of the [Trump] administration, and it’s not the same model of, if you would, a traditional school district,” said Henderson Lewis Jr., the head of the district that oversees New Orleans charters, in a recent interview. “We’re somewhere in the middle, which I see as a third way.”

Henderson Lewis Jr., the head of the district that oversees New Orleans charters AND TRUMP----same team global banking 5% players.

This is what OBAMA era education reforms did to our FEDERAL K-12 funding system AND our Federal STUDENT LOAN system----killed all that equal opportunity and access and is now handing all those hundreds of billions of dollars to these CITY/STATE TRUSTS.


Here is PENCE INDIANA doing the same to education funding using a different TRUST name


'The groups and schools that the Indianapolis-based Mind Trust — whose logo is at the center — have supported. (The Mind Trust)'




A ‘portfolio’ of schools?

How a nationwide effort to disrupt urban school districts is gaining traction



By Matt Barnum  -  December 6, 2017

Several years ago, Indianapolis Public Schools looked like a lot of urban school districts. The vast majority of students attended traditional public schools, though enrollment was dwindling, and the district had an adversarial relationship with its small but growing number of charter schools.



That’s no longer true. The district is actively turning over schools to charter operators, and it’s rolling out a common enrollment system for district and charter schools that could make it easier for charters to grow. Nearly half of the district’s students now attend charters or district schools with charter-like freedoms.



It’s a remarkable shift that many in Indianapolis credit to — or blame on -- the Mind Trust, a well-funded local nonprofit with a clear vision for improving education in Indianapolis.



Since its founding in 2006, the organization has called for dramatic changes to schools; recruited outside advocacy, teacher training, and charter groups; and spent millions to help launch new charter and district schools. The Mind Trust’s vision has also won support from the school board — which was elected with the financial backing of Stand for Children, an advocacy group recruited by the Mind Trust.



“They’re more influential than the IPS school board and the IPS superintendent,” said MaryAnn Schlegel Ruegger, an Indianapolis public schools advocate who has been critical of the Mind Trust’s role.



Now, a Mind Trust–style organization may be coming to a city near you.



A growing number of philanthropists, advocates, and policymakers say the way to improve schools is to upend the traditional school district. Usually pointing to the same cities as models — Indianapolis, along with Denver, New Orleans, and Washington D.C. — they want to see more charter schools and more district schools run like charter schools.

In their idealized vision, families are free to choose schools outside their neighborhood using an enrollment system encompassing all schools. The district gives up most of its traditional role setting policy for schools and instead becomes the body holding all kinds of schools accountable by closing ones that don’t succeed.


Together, those ideas make up what’s known as the “portfolio model” for managing schools, and its advocates are making a significant mark on a number of American school districts. Their sights are set on even more.


From Atlanta to Cincinnati to Oakland, a loosely connected network of nonprofit groups is working to reshape the way their school districts function. Their national scope has gone mostly unexamined, even as their influence is arguably far more likely to affect schools in the average American city than a Betsy DeVos-inspired voucher program.



Over time, something close to a playbook has emerged from their work. It’s not an exact sequence, and people within the same camp have different opinions about exactly what it should entail.


This is a look at how we got here, a few of the essential steps to reshaping a traditional school district, and what happens next.


A model emerges:


Dozens of cities and millions in support



To understand the growing movement, a good place to start is with Ethan Gray and his organization, Education Cities.


The group started as a project of the Mind Trust, which hired Gray to create a network of peer groups across the country. Gray says his views were deeply influenced by the Mind Trust’s founder and leader David Harris, who helped him “understand how all the different pieces fit together when you’re trying to catalyze major change at the city level.”



Ethan Gray, head of Education Cities.


“Give us the freedom from overly prescriptive regulation and micromanagement, and in turn we will promise to help kids achieve on assessments at a certain level and create a strong school culture,” said Gray, who believes the traditional district model has fallen short, pointing to low test scores and vast achievement gaps.



Those ideas came originally from the academic world, specifically the University of Washington, where a professor named Paul Hill founded the Center on Reinventing Public Education in 1993. There, Hill pushed the idea that the key to improving schools was to rethink school boards.



Instead of operating all schools, boards should oversee them, focusing on which ones do best and worst, he argued. “Like investors with diversified portfolios of stocks and bonds, school boards would closely manage their community’s portfolio of educational service offerings, divesting less productive schools and adding more promising ones,” Hill wrote more than a decade ago.


The stock-market imagery was not a stroke of marketing genius when it came to winning allies in public education, and some advocates still bristle at the term “portfolio.”


“Diane Ravitch and the teachers unions now call us ‘corporate reformers’ and the phrase ‘portfolio model’ plays right into their hands,” said David Osborne, the author of a recent book that rebrands the approach as the “21st century schools” model.



Some charter critics accuse the portfolio model of being a plan to turn all schools into charters, as essentially happened in New Orleans, one of the models for the movement. Osborne argues that districts shouldn’t run schools, instead leaving that to outside groups. Gray insists it can work with district schools, and already is in Denver and Indianapolis.


But even as portfolio advocates differ on some specifics, they are united by broad beliefs, and brought together by unifying hubs. CRPE, the think tank now led by Robin Lake, regularly gathers districts interested in the portfolio model, and Education Cities, which has helped start some of the nonprofit groups, convenes them and offers advice and consulting.



Their work spans the country. Education Cities now counts 32 separate member organizations in 25 cities. So while Gray’s group itself is moderately sized, with around a $2 million budget and a dozen staff members, the ecosystem of independent local groups being built around its ideas is much larger in scope.

Member groups exist in three cities often promoted as models: in Indianapolis, it’s the Mind Trust. In New Orleans, it’s New Schools for New Orleans. Denver — a district with a self-described portfolio-management team — has two local philanthropies in the Education Cities network, and a new organization recently opened there that Gray says he helped advise.


Potentially representing the next wave of the movement, other member groups operate in cities like Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Oakland, which have not generally embraced the portfolio model.


Those organizations, which Gray calls “quarterbacks,” distribute money to get the portfolio approach off the ground in their cities — supporting schools seen as successful (often both charter and district schools), pushing for policies like common enrollment, and recruiting national education groups like Teach for America, Relay Graduate School of Education, TNTP, and Stand For Children.


Exactly how much money has flowed to support the portfolio model across the country is unclear. But prominent philanthropies, including some that have also spent millions in recent years funding charter schools nationwide, are investing heavily.


Education Cities is supported by a number of them, including the Dell and Walton foundations, as is CRPE. (Walton also supports Chalkbeat. Read more about our funding here.)



Many of the member groups are headed by former charter leaders and receive money from those national foundations, who see their investments as creating proof points that could become models for other cities. The Mind Trust, for instance, says it has raised $77 million since its inception in 2006, the bulk of which cames from local donors and a third from national groups.


The philanthropy that has most clearly embraced the portfolio model is the Arnold Foundation, whose K-12 education work is now led by Neerav Kingsland, the former head of New Schools for New Orleans. The Arnold Foundation has awarded a nearly $2 million grant to Education Cities and millions more to a handful of local quarterback groups, including the Mind Trust.



“If The Mind Trust can help to produce … gains in Indianapolis, the city can serve as a model for other communities across the nation,” John Arnold said in a video explaining his foundation’s investments.


But Education Cities operates on the principle that good ideas alone won’t reshape districts.
“We’re skeptical that systems themselves will actually go through some sort of self-driven transformation,” Gray says.



That’s where the nonprofit “quarterbacks” and their allies come in. They have varying perspectives and priorities, and there isn’t a set sequence of actions that they all take. But for simplicity’s sake, here are three common pieces of their strategy.



Strategy #1: Apply outside pressure.

Rather than waiting for districts to improve their schools, the groups pressure them to change course by directly supporting schools they see as effective and by creating new schools altogether.



The Mind Trust, for instance, partners with Indianapolis Public Schools to help select, fund, and launch new innovation schools. Those schools are run by outside operators, not unionized, and free from district rules around things like teacher pay or length of the school day, though they are officially counted as district schools.


The Philadelphia Schools Partnership, an Education Cities group, funded the opening of five new schools (four charters and one district-run) last school year. Great Public Schools Now, a Los Angeles-based group, pledged nearly $4 million to expand five district schools and has helped pay for a charter school’s new building.


In other cases, that means inviting charter operators to include the local market in their expansion plans, like when the Mind Trust tried to bring the Rocketship charter school network to Indianapolis, though ultimately no Rocketship schools opened there.



The idea is that with new, high-quality schools attracting local students, school districts may have to close their lowest-performing schools to stay solvent — a process some see as a feature, not a bug.


Myrna Castrejón, the head of Great Public Schools Now, at a town hall event. (GPSN)“To the extent that our expansion creates the urgent need for [district] realignment and closures, I think we would be very supportive of that,” said Myrna Castrejón, the head of Great Public Schools Now.


“We believe strongly [that] schools shouldn’t have an automatic right to taxpayer resources in the absence of effectiveness,” said Mark Gleason, the head of the Philadelphia School Partnership.


Advocates for the idea of opening new schools and closing others based on performance often point to New Orleans, where the school district was dismantled after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and has been almost completely replaced by charter schools. Charters there are largely free to operate as their leaders see fit, but their student performance is monitored, and a number have been closed for low test scores.



Test scores have improved dramatically across New Orleans in the years since, though some of those gains appear to have faded recently. Research found a substantial chunk of the improvements came from closing or replacing existing schools.
But the success of school closures or takeovers is far from guaranteed.

Students’ new schools are not necessarily better; for instance, the Achievement School District in Tennessee, which had charter operators take over district schools and has been praised as a leader in implementing the portfolio model, did not improve test scores.


Districts also don’t always close schools quickly, resulting in students and resources being spread thin across all schools. And when they do shutter schools, communities often resist, worrying about the loss of a local institution.
“I’m concerned about the number and burden of closures on particular communities,” said Terrenda White, a professor at the University of Colorado who has questioned the success of Denver’s school reforms. “That means more risk for displacement of kids and teachers.”


Strategy #2: Push for one-stop school enrollment.

Another piece of the portfolio playbook is supporting enrollment systems that allow families to easily choose among district and charter schools.



Adding new schools and new choices can make things harder on parents, who must navigate several enrollment processes to make a choice and get assigned to a school. Common enrollment systems create a single place to navigate it all — while also ensuring that all parents are exposed to new schools, and making it especially clear to district leaders which schools are attracting the fewest students.




“In addition to efficiency for families, unified enrollment helps the system make better decisions about which schools to replicate, recruit, incubate, scale, and maximize and, perhaps, where to locate them,” according to an Education Cities report.


Denver, New Orleans, and Washington D.C. all have common enrollment systems, and Indianapolis just adopted one. In Denver, the use of a streamlined system did in fact increase enrollment in charters among low-income students and English-language learners, though in New Orleans parents said it was actually harder to navigate initially.



"We believe strongly schools shouldn’t have an automatic right to taxpayer resources in the absence of effectiveness."Mark Gleason, Philadelphia School Partnership

In places where this system doesn’t exist, Education Cities groups are often pushing for it.



The Philadelphia Schools Partnership created a detailed plan to unify enrollment in the city’s district, charter and private schools, though the idea hasn’t taken off. Oakland-based Educate78 also spearheaded an ultimately unsuccessful effort to create a common system for district and charter schools with a $300,000 grant. The head of SchoolSmartKC, a Kansas City group, has testified before the state legislature in favor of a unified system, though the district’s superintendent says he’s skeptical.


While charter critics see the approach as a veiled effort to expand charters, centralized systems like this have also drawn another surprising adversary: more conservative supporters of school choice.



These free-market charter supporters fear that a single entity — a portfolio manager — with the power to manage enrollment and choose which schools to open and close would actually limit choice, put too much focus on test scores, and risk allowing unions to wrest control of the entire apparatus.



In fact, in 2016 it was Betsy DeVos, now the U.S. Secretary of Education, who was the key opponent of a plan to create a commission to act like a portfolio manager in Detroit, an effort spearheaded by an Education Cities member group in the city.



Strategy #3: Create a very different power structure.


Outside groups like the Education Cities quarterbacks can only do so much to implement this vision.
To see it brought to life requires the buy-in of the school board, mayor, or state — whoever runs the schools. That’s why the portfolio approach has gained particular traction in districts where states have taken over the schools, including New Orleans, Newark, and Lawrence, Massachusetts.



The groups and schools that the Indianapolis-based Mind Trust — whose logo is at the center — have supported. (The Mind Trust)



In other instances, supporters of charter schools have pushed change in school districts by working to fill local school boards with people sympathetic to the portfolio model.


Indianapolis is a case in point. The Mind Trust recruited Stand For Children, an advocacy organization that supports political candidates. In the 2012 election, Stand-endorsed candidates shifted control of the school board.



The organization doesn’t have to disclose how much it spent to support school board members in the city, but Stand for Children’s annual report says that in 2012, it “help[ed] elect two new members to the Indianapolis Public Schools board, which [led] to the exit of an ineffective superintendent.” The report also claims credit for school board victories in 2014 and 2016.



The capture of the school board cleared the way for many subsequent changes, including the hiring of a superintendent Lewis Ferebee who has supported a portfolio vision of the school district.


“If you look at Indianapolis, there’s no way to implement the vision without democratically controlled support,” Gray said.


School boards favorable to a portfolio-aligned vision have also been elected in Denver and more recently in Los Angeles, with financial backing from wealthy advocates of charter schools. Those charter school supporters have matched and sometimes exceeded spending by unions in a number of school board races previously dominated by teachers groups.



The portfolio model undercuts the unions and associations that represent teachers in other ways. The biggest is by reducing the number of schools whose teachers belong to the union, diminishing the union’s membership — and thus its power and its money.



The degree to which this is true depends on the political climate: in Indianapolis, innovation network schools are not under the district’s collective bargaining agreement, and thus lose certain job protections. Denver’s innovation schools can waive certain parts of the union contract, though teachers can still choose to join the union.



But most charter schools are not unionized. In New Orleans, soon after Hurricane Katrina teachers in the existing district were unilaterally fired, gutting the United Teachers of New Orleans, which has since organized at a handful of charters.


To some advocates, the reduction in union strength is integral to the model. They see an entrenched bureaucracy, maintained by “adult interests” — usually code for teachers unions — as the problem, and the portfolio vision as the solution.


“More than any other single reform this model breaks the political stranglehold interest groups have over elected school boards,” writes Osborne in his book “Reinventing America’s Schools.” (Osborne recently compared teachers unions’ opposition to charter school expansion in Massachusetts to George Wallace’s promotion of mandated school segregation.) Osborne’s work has been funded by prominent philanthropic supporters of charter schools and the portfolio model: the Arnold, Broad, and Walton foundations.




Some worry about the role of philanthropy, big-money donors, and state takeovers as undermining local, democratic control.


"We’re skeptical that systems themselves will actually go through some sort of self-driven transformation."Ethan Gray, Education Cities“As elected school board members, once our term is up, we come back up for consideration,” said Jennifer Wolfsie, a school board member in Kansas City. “If the constituents I serve are not happy they have the opportunity … to vote me out,” she said. “In philanthropy, there isn’t that process.”




Huriya Jabbar, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied New Orleans schools post-Katrina, acknowledges the large test-score gains in the city as a result of the reforms. But, she said, that came with a cost: community buy-in, in the wake of the mass dismissal of New Orleans’ largely black teaching force and the state takeover of most of the city schools.


“Even advocates of the reforms have acknowledged that the one thing they got wrong was community,” Jabbar said. “And I think of that as quite a big thing.”



The future: The portfolio idea in the DeVos era


Exactly how far these groups will be able to push their school districts toward a new way of running its schools is unclear. Few places are like Indianapolis or Denver, with strong political support for the model — and New Orleans’ hurricane-induced changes make it entirely unique.


New quarterback-style groups have continued to emerge, including ones recently formed in Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City, and Memphis. But other Education Cities members have faced setbacks.


In Nashville, the group Project Renaissance recently scaled back its operations, and despite heavy involvement from Stand for Children, charter skeptics maintained control of the school board in elections last year. A Detroit group also recently closed down, though the Skillman Foundation there remains an Education Cities member.



One place where there is no Education Cities group: New York City, which under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg was held up as a model by portfolio advocates like Paul Hill. That approach was substantially altered by Bloomberg’s replacement, Bill de Blasio, who has been cool to charters, slowed school closures, and reduced principals’ autonomy.


These setbacks underscore the challenges portfolio advocates will face in advancing their vision. Even its supporters disagree on a number of points — how clear their case is for a nationwide expansion, what strategies to pursue, and whether the model can work for district-run schools.


Meanwhile, the effort comes in a perilous time for charter school supporters, as nationwide support has dropped and they have become linked to an unpopular president and education secretary.


But for left-of-center charter backers, the portfolio approach presents an opportunity to position their brand of school choice as distinct from DeVos and other conservatives, who emphasize private school vouchers and want few limits on parent choice.


“Our model is probably different from the model of the [Trump] administration, and it’s not the same model of, if you would, a traditional school district,” said Henderson Lewis Jr., the head of the district that oversees New Orleans charters, in a recent interview. “We’re somewhere in the middle, which I see as a third way.”

______________________________________________

'Ethan Gray, head of Education Cities'.

Here in Baltimore our Baltimore City Hall and Baltimore Development Corporation ---Greater Baltimore Committee, and global hedge fund corporation JOHNS HOPKINS are already MOVING FORWARD the killing of AMERICAN PUBLIC K-UNIVERSITY with this THE CITY FUND policy bringing out all those far-right wing 5% freemason/Greek player global banking non-profits to PRETEND all this is good for the poor.

The REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE education policy stance is killing all these NGOs tied to far-right wing and rebuild our US Federal public school funding system tied to US CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS----tied to US BILL OF RIGHTS-----tied to several decades of FEDERAL COURT PRECEDENCE.

How hard is it to get all these global banking NGOs out of our US city government?  It is as EASY PEASY as getting rid of all global banking 5% player pols black, white, and brown.  All our US public education structure is still in place----the system has simply been corrupted by CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.



Destroy Public Education, Version 2.0: The City Fund

August 29, 2018 by Thomas Ultican



Credit: Pixabay
By Thomas Ultican / Tultican


Billionaire Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, has joined with billionaire former Enron executive, John Arnold, to launch an aggressive destroy public education (DPE) initiative. They claim to have invested $100 million each to start The City Fund. Neerav Kingsland declares he is the Fund’s Managing Partner and says the fund will help cities across America institute proven school reform successes such as increasing “the number of public schools that are governed by non-profit organizations.”


Ending local control of public schools through democratic means is a priority for DPE forces. In 2017, EdSource reported on Hastings campaign against democracy; writing, “His latest salvo against school boards that many regard as a bedrock of American democracy came last week in a speech he made to the annual conference of The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Washington D.C., attended by about 4,500 enthusiastic charter school advocates, teachers and administrators.”



When announcing the new fund, Kingsland listed fourteen founding members of The City Fund. There is little professional classroom teaching experience or training within the group. Chris Barbic was a Teach for America (TFA) teacher in Houston, Texas for two years. Similarly, Kevin Huffman was also a TFA teacher in Houston for three years. The only other member that may have some education experience is Kevin Shafer. His background is obscure.



The operating structure of the new fund is modeled after a law firm. Six of the fourteen founding members are lawyers: Gary Borden; David Harris; Kevin Huffman; Neerav Kingsland; Jessica Pena and Kameelah Shaheed-Diallo.



Ready to Pilfer Community Schools and End School Boards

In a 2012 published debate about school reform, Kingsland justified his call for ending democratic control of public education writing,



“I believe that true autonomy can only be achieved by government relinquishing its power of school operation. I believe that well regulated charter and voucher markets – that provide educators with public funds to operate their own schools – will outperform all other vehicles of autonomy in the long-run. In short, autonomy must be real autonomy: government operated schools that allow “site level decision making” feels more Orwellian than empowering – if we believe educators should run schools, let’s let them run schools.”



This is a belief in “the invisible hand” of markets making superior judgments and private businesses always outperforming government administration. There may be some truth here, but it is certainly not an ironclad law.



The City Fund has distinct roots stretching back to early 2016.


On April 4 that year, Kingsland announced on his blog, Relinquishment, “Very excited about this update: Ken Bubp and Chris Barbic are joining the combined efforts of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and Hastings Fund.”




In January of 2016, Philanthropy News Digest reported, “Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings has announced that he has created a $100 million fund at the  (SVCF) that will be focused on education.”




The Silicon Valley Community Foundation is a donor-directed fund, so Hastings’s fund is dark money with no way of tracking where its tax-free spending is directed. The SVCF 2016 tax form shows Neerav Kingsland earning $253,846 as a Managing Director of the Hastings fund. He was also simultaneously serving as Senior Education Fellow at the Arnold Foundation and was on the board at the California Charter Schools Association.



The SVCF was founded in 2006 and has grown to be one of the largest non-profit charities in America. The tax form cited above shows a total income in 2016 of $4.4 billion and end of year assets of $7.2 billion while making grants totaling to $1.9 billion.


A March 2018 article in Chalkbeat reported,


“Eleven years after founding a nonprofit that has dramatically reshaped Indianapolis schools, David Harris is stepping down to help launch an as yet unexplained national education group.”
“The national group is in the early stages of development, said Harris, who declined to provide more details about his co-founders or their plans. A release from The Mind Trust said the new organization aims to ‘help cities around the country build the right conditions for education change.’”




Much of the description of The City Fund sounds like the activities of the national DPE organization, Education Cities. At the end of July, the Education Cities website disclosed,



“Today, we are announcing that Education Cities is undergoing an evolution that we think will better support local education leaders.


“Several staff from Education Cities – including our Founder and CEO, Ethan Gray – are partnering with colleagues from the philanthropic, non-profit, district, charter, and state sectors to create a new non-profit organization called The City Fund.”



The City Fund has not shared a web-address, but they have clearly started work. Four of the announced members have updated their LinkedIn profiles indicating they started working for The City Fund in either June or July.



The City Fund’s central agenda is promoting the portfolio model of school reform. Schools scoring in the bottom 5 percent on standardized testing are to be closed and reopened as charter schools or Innovation schools. In either case, the local community loses their right to hold elected leaders accountable, because the schools are removed from the school boards portfolio.


Even Jay P. Greene of the University of Arkansas wrote an open letter to John Arnold warning about what a bad idea the portfolio model is. He began, “The Arnold Foundation invests heavily in another initiative that promotes rigorous science for medical and policy decision-making, yet they do not seem to apply that same standard of proof to their own education strategy.’
____________________________________________



We will end this week's discussion of education public policy by returning to a topic often discussed----TEACH FOR AMERICA as that global banking 1% privatized teaching corporation which is literally forcing our public school teachers to join them as they get forced to retire or are fired by our local SCHOOL BOARDS-----under FALSE pretenses.

What is sad for our American 99% WE THE PEOPLE is watching our citizens simply fighting to have a job-------being pushed into the national media as the face of support for these EDUCATION REFORMS----made to look like WINNERS when they are tied to THE CITY TRUSTS and GREAT SCHOOLS RATING CORPORATIONS for corporate K-career schools on STOCK MARKET.

Folks, we are MOVING FORWARD to an end of US FED/US WALL STREET as ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE creates ONE CENTRAL BANK with only private stock options open to only the global 1%.  No one is WINNING in future income supporting all these EDUCATION TRUSTS ---HOUSING TRUSTS-----LAND BANK TRUSTS.




'When announcing the new fund, Kingsland listed fourteen founding members of The City Fund. There is little professional classroom teaching experience or training within the group. Chris Barbic was a Teach for America (TFA) teacher in Houston, Texas for two years'.


We do not see HAPPY CAMPERS in our TEACH FOR AMERICA CORPORATE education employees.

We do not see HAPPY CAMPERS in our TEACH FOR AMERICA CORPORATE education employees. Of course our global banking 5% player international labor leaders simply see organizing TEACH FOR AMERICA as the solution---soon those same 5% labor players will be organizing ROBOTS and AI----well, not really.

If 350 million US citizens black, white, and brown and our new to US immigrant citizens do not support this----work to STOP MOVING FORWARD we can indeed FIX BALTIMORE by building a REAL public K-university.


This is to where all our US STEM college grads were forced to work----not in their careers but pushing BAD EDUCATION POLICIES


'Teach for America, a program which places high-achieving college graduates as teachers in low-income schools around the country',


US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES------are those CITY TRUSTS.



Teach For America under heavy fire from educators and former members


Critics allege that the program destabilizes schools and communities and questioned its role in privatization of education


Teach for America, a program which places high-achieving college graduates as teachers in low-income schools around the country, is coming under heavy criticism by educators who allege its training for teachers is insufficient and that it destabilizes schools and communities.

About 100 of those critics assembled in Chicago last weekend at the Free Minds Free People education conference to discuss "organizing resistance against Teach for America", which is one of the most well-known efforts to improve the nation's flagging educational system. Its educators represent less than 1% of teachers in the US.

TFA alumni, parents, community activists and veteran teachers gathered to discuss concerns over the role the program plays in the privatization of education. Their criticisms fall in line with those mounted against the program in the past: that the seven-week training program is insufficient, that it destabilizes schools with short-term teachers, and that it disenfranchises communities. In 2009, USA Today reported on concerns that the program's teachers were displacing older educators.



"In the end, I felt the way I was teaching brought me and my students and their communities pain, and that's why I'm part of this movement now," said Hannah Price, a TFA alumna and current teacher who attended the meeting in Chicago. "It doesn't have to be like that."

"We certainly have areas of improvements are looking to be better, but based on what we hear from the principals that employ our teachers and the results we see in organizations where our alumni play leadership roles, we have had a positive impact, and that has to be part of the discussion," said TFA spokesman Steve Mancini.


Problems in New Orleans
TFA participants, usually recent college graduates who have majored in subjects other than teaching, must pass a test before they are are placed in schools in low-income communities for a two-year commitment. They undergo seven weeks of training before the school year begins, and continue to receive coaching from veteran teachers, a TFA coach and an alumni network throughout their commitment.

Price began her two-year commitment in New Orleans in 2010 and said she felt unprepared to teach. She said she was distressed by things including an expectation that she should keep her students silent in the hallways, at lunch and in reading periods.


"It felt so unnatural, but I didn't have the experience or language to process how detrimental that was to students," Price said.


Price was on the verge of quitting until she started using resources outside TFA to augment her teaching and help her connect with the local community. Price still works as a teacher in New Orleans, and she credits veteran teacher Stephanie Anders for providing her with the support to continue with the program.


The two met at the New Teachers' Roundtable, a group that encourages new teachers to think critically about the New Orleans public school system. Anders, now a doctoral student at the University of New Orleans, said that before joining the group: "I had kind of thought of the TFA people as bad guys."



Anders is a traditionally trained teacher, with multiple professional certifications and extensive experience as an instructional coach for teachers. Yet she has been unable to find a full-time teaching position in New Orleans and she feels TFA's permeation of the New Orleans school system has played a role in that. This year, approximately 375 New Orleans teachers are members of TFA, up from 85 a few years ago.


Louisiana state officials laid off more than 7,000 employees and took over 102 of 117 city schools after Hurricane Katrina left the city's population scattered in 2005. When it was time to rehire teachers, the government overlooked the fired employees, who have since won a $1.5bn class action lawsuit which the school system is appealing. At the same time, Teach for America's New Orleans program thrived, creating tension in the city's educational community.


Mancini, the TFA spokesman, said those hiring decisions were made by school principals, not the program.


"Teach for America, for over 20 years, has brought smart, caring and dedicated people into education and work in low-income communities," Mancini said. "Over 80% of our alumni are either working in schools or in education or in low-income communities."

ISN'T THAT A COINCIDENCE----FOR 20 YEARS OF CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA OUR US COLLEGE GRADS HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIND JOBS IN THEIR DEGREE FIELDS----THEY ARE BEING PUSHED TO TEACH FOR AMERICA.



The organization has long used data to defend criticisms, though many feel the reports are skewed and a fair study comparing a TFA teacher to a traditionally trained teacher doesn't yet exist.



TFA's co-chief executives recently completed a "listening tour" during which they received feedback from members, community members and alumni who provided "a wide range of opinions", said Mancini.


"Teach for America is not the only program who has teachers who struggle in their first year – teachers in traditional programs struggle," said Mancini. "The question should be how do we help first year teachers improve and grow, how do they become constant learners in the classroom. We're constantly thinking about the feedback to give those teachers to get better."

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August 30th, 2018

8/30/2018

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IS THERE REALLY a crying need for graduates with STEM degrees?  Absolutely NOT.

The article below appears in PARENTING------and it is written by GREAT SCHOOLS.  We discuss often that GREAT SCHOOLS is a global banking STOCK MARKET rating agency geared to CORPORATE EDUCATION promoting those global education corporations to boost profit-margins.  When PARENTING prints an article on education written by global banking 1%---it is not providing REAL INFORMATION for our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE.


'Students who manage their time well may succeed in STEM programs that are self-paced and have kids working on independent projects'.

The statement above should be a warning to a super-majority of our US parents.  Our US public education plummeted from BEST IN WORLD to worst in developed nations because of CLINTON ERA 1990s EDUCATION REFORMS that removed all classroom RIGOR----that removed all individual responsibility for learning when it installed the classroom format of GROUP LEARNING.  Our US student results led to large numbers of students not able to read or write because they were allowed to be LOST inside GROUP LEARNING.  We KNOW only 10-20% of our students respond well to GROUP LEARNING FORMATS.  Even those percentage of students often do not perform well without guided learning.

As this article states---the format inside these STEM schools besides having GROUP LEARNING is computer oriented lesson programs where all the basics of creating graphs, creative thought on how data should be represented are provided in online lessons.  Remember, our US students lost the ability to do BASIC MATH-----because they were allowed to use CALCULATORS.



The lowdown on STEM schools


Given the crying need for graduates with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees, is a STEM school right for your child?

by: Crystal Yednak | September 21, 2015 PARENTING
 
A high school student tosses a ball into the air and watches it fall. Then he films the falling ball and graphs the movement on his computer. Nearby, a sophomore scrawls out equations with a blue marker, while a classmate looks over his shoulder and shakes her head. “I think that number should be negative.” They come to an agreement before the teacher stops by, nudging them to explain how they got it. This action-packed hour is a science class — “Scientific Inquiry — Physics,” to be exact.



This type of noisy, exuberant classroom exemplifies what Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) schools are about. Learning is collaborative and project-based; kids work closely together in a hands-on way to solve real-world problems. Learning problem-solving skills — and helping students develop into creative, critical thinkers — is at the core of any true STEM school. “Teachers are not just telling us,” says Jennifer Bailey, 17, a senior at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. “We use our own data and discovery to realize a concept.” While all schools teach math and science, good STEM schools focus deeply on these subjects in hopes of better preparing students for the high-demand tech jobs of the future.


Is a STEM school right for my child?

If your child has an innate interest in science or building things, a STEM school may be a natural choice. But administrators say these schools cater to all kinds of learners and that most students appreciate the hands-on nature of the curricula. Students who manage their time well may succeed in STEM programs that are self-paced and have kids working on independent projects.


Why you might consider a STEM high school


Over the past 10 years, jobs in STEM fields have grown three times as fast as jobs in non-STEM fields, according to the Department of Commerce, and STEM fields are expected to grow by 17 percent between 2008 and 2018, compared to just 9.8 percent growth for non-STEM fields in the same time frame. But without an influx of graduates in these areas, the U.S. will not have enough workers to fill those jobs. STEM schools can help young people gain the skills necessary to succeed in these fields. Over the next decade alone, the U.S. must produce approximately 1 million more STEM-degree graduates than currently projected to meet the demands of the economy, according to a 2012 report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Recognizing this gap, educators have focused on getting more students hooked on math and science earlier in their school careers, which is why more STEM programs are being launched nationwide.



You’ll mainly find STEM high schools, but there are some middle schools with a STEM emphasis, too. Some STEM schools are open to all students, meaning there are no tests required; others are selective and consider a student’s academic record in admission decisions.

There are three primary types of STEM programs:
  • A STEM specialty school: The entire school’s focus is on STEM and every student participates in a curriculum of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
  • A STEM program within a larger school: Some schools create STEM academies within their schools that allow interested students to study STEM in more depth.
  • Residential STEM programs: For these intensive programs, students live on campus and attend a STEM school.
Programs may delve broadly into all STEM subjects or they may specialize in a particular area, such as computer technology. Vocational or CTE programs that prepare students for certain high-tech fields also fall within the spectrum of STEM schools.


What you might find in a STEM classroom
  • Students behaving as scientists: On a typical day, they may be recording observations, carrying out experiments, or conducting their own research. Learning is project-based and sometimes messy, but students learn by doing, not by rote memorization.
  • Connecting STEM learning to a career: To help students understand what kind of STEM jobs are available, schools may bring in tutors from local technology companies or organize internships at hospitals or research institutions.
  • Integrating with other subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math subjects are woven into other areas of the curriculum, with courses such as the “History of Science” or “Environmental History.”
  • Making use of technology: By taking quizzes on their laptops, entering data into spreadsheets, and creating graphs to illustrate the results of their experiments, students are using technology in their daily studies. STEM programs such as L&N STEM Academy in Knoxville, TN, participate in one-to-one programs through which students are given their own individual computer (or iPad, in this case) for their work. Teachers may have web pages featuring necessary classroom materials, which may also allow students to work ahead if they want to or review a lesson if need be.
  • Noise: Classrooms are not quiet and are often arranged so that students can sit and work in groups. This encourages collaboration as students discuss their work and challenge each other’s ideas.

Questions to ask when considering a STEM school
  • Is this really a STEM school? With the recent national focus on creating more STEM graduates, “You see lots of places springing up calling themselves STEM schools, but they don’t necessarily have a clearly articulated explanation of what makes them STEM,” said Christopher Kolar, founding co-chair of the Committee for the Advancement of STEM Specialty Schools. Does the school offer a full STEM program beyond the science and mathematics offered in typical schools? A look at the course schedule may indicate whether the coursework is there to challenge students and prep them for higher-level college STEM courses. For instance, are pre-calculus, calculus, and AP calculus offered? Can students take a second year of physics or engineering? Consider the breadth and depth of the school’s STEM offerings.
  • Does it help prepare students for a STEM career? To be sure the school is properly preparing students for the jobs of the future, ask school administrators if they communicate with students’ potential employers. Businesses should be partners, bringing in resources, providing role models for students, and keeping staff up-to-date on new developments so the curriculum stays relevant.
  • Are students working with computers and other technology? Or are the new iPads sitting in a box in the corner because teachers have not been trained on how to incorporate them into lesson plans? Ask for examples of how laptops (or tablets) help with instruction and if the administration provides ongoing technology training for teachers. Likewise, does the school have the lab equipment necessary for students to do a broad range of experiments?
  • Do teachers have backgrounds in the subjects they are teaching? Science should be taught by teachers who are excited about and understand science. Also, do mentoring programs exist to encourage teachers to improve their STEM skills and knowledge?
What supporters say


If we want to have the scientists and engineers to solve future problems, STEM schools are important to the country’s future: finding sustainable energy sources, keeping water supplies clean, and discovering new technologies that help us compete in a global economy. Supporters say there is an urgent need to attract and educate more students in these fields and keep them engrossed throughout their elementary, high school, and college years. And from the student’s perspective, if they have the skills employers need, they will have an easier time finding a job upon graduation.
What critics sayBy increasing the emphasis on science, math, technology, and engineering, some worry that students may lose out on other key skills. Electives like foreign languages and the arts help foster creativity and broaden students’ world view. Some STEM programs try to make up for this by offering arts programs after school; others say they recognize the need and incorporate as much arts education as they can into the school day.


Because girls historically have not shown the same interest in STEM fields as boys, critics say the schools need to do more to reach out to girls and get them excited about science by providing role models in female scientists or crushing traditional gender stereotypes in the classroom.


A final word of advice

Make sure you understand how fully the school has embraced a STEM curriculum. If you are expecting your child to be taking advanced physics courses and the school only offers one introductory course, both you and your child could be disappointed. Ask the school to see sample schedules. As always: visit any school you’re considering. Talk to teachers about the ways students use technology in class. Poke your head in the labs. Ask what professional development opportunities exist for teachers to stay on top of their game and whether the school has networked with local companies and research institutions.


____________________________________________


Here we have an article written with REAL data on education and job stats. The US has all last century been the world leader in STEM education and graduates----our US students are not DUMBER incapable.

When we think about the article shared this week telling us CHINA is already retooling those global factories to robotics and AI to a point of needing a few dozen human workers----we know there are hundreds of millions of Chinese 99% perfectly capable of being STEM GRADS who will not be getting those jobs either. So, there is a GLUT of student grads around the world wanting those STEM jobs.

WHEN OUR US k-12 AND UNIVERSITIES DELIBERATELY STAGE CAREER CURRICULA KNOWING OUR US COLLEGE GRADS WILL NOT FIND JOBS----THEY ARE NOT WORKING IN PUBLIC INTEREST.


The problem is NOT that US 99% WE THE PEOPLE are being made to compete with global labor pool for increasingly fewer jobs especially in STEM----the problem is US students are losing the best in world history BROAD CATEGORIES of vocational pathways having the PARENTS AND STUDENTS deciding and choosing what fits best for our children.



11 million US STEM grads working outside their degree category-----you better believe this is a conservative figure.



30 Aug 2013 | 14:00 GMT

The STEM Crisis Is a Myth

Forget the dire predictions of a looming shortfall of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians


By Robert N. Charettet


You must have seen the warning a thousand times: Too few young people study scientific or technical subjects, businesses can’t find enough workers in those fields, and the country’s competitive edge is threatened.


It pretty much doesn’t matter what country you’re talking about—the United States is facing this crisis, as is Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia, China, Brazil, South Africa, Singapore, India…the list goes on. In many of these countries, the predicted shortfall of STEM (short for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workers is supposed to number in the hundreds of thousands or even the millions. A 2012 report by President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, for instance, stated that over the next decade, 1 million additional STEM graduates will be needed. In the U.K., the Royal Academy of Engineering reported last year that the nation will have to graduate 100 000 STEM majors every year until 2020 just to stay even with demand. Germany, meanwhile, is sa to have a shortage of about 210 000 workers in what’s known there as the MINT disciplines—mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, and technology.



The situation is so dismal that governments everywhere are now pouring billions of dollars each year into myriad efforts designed to boost the ranks of STEM workers. President Obama has called for government and industry to train 10 000 new U.S. engineers every year as well as 100 000 additional STEM teachers by 2020. And until those new recruits enter the workforce, tech companies like Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft are lobbying to boost the number of H-1B visas--temporary immigration permits for skilled workers—from 65 000 per year to as many as 180 000. The European Union is similarly introducing the new Blue Card visa to bring in skilled workers from outside the EU. The government of India has said it needs to add 800 new universities, in part to avoid a shortfall of 1.6 million university-educated engineers by the end of the decade.



And yet, alongside such dire projections, you’ll also find reports suggesting just the opposite--that there are more STEM workers than suitable jobs. One study found, for example, that wages for U.S. workers in computer and math fields have largely stagnated since 2000. Even as the Great Recession slowly recedes, STEM workers at every stage of the career pipeline, from freshly minted grads to mid- and late-career Ph.D.s, still struggle to find employment as many companies, including Boeing, IBM, and Symantec, continue to lay off thousands of STEM workers.




  A Matter of Supply vs. Demand: Every year U.S. schools grant more STEM degrees than there are available jobs. When you factor in H-1B visa holders, existing STEM degree holders, and the like, it’s hard to make a case that there’s a STEM labor shortage.



To parse the simultaneous claims of both a shortage and a surplus of STEM workers, we’ll need to delve into the data behind the debate, how it got going more than a half century ago, and the societal, economic, and nationalistic biases that have perpetuated it. And what that dissection reveals is that there is indeed a STEM crisis—just not the one everyone’s been talking about. The real STEM crisis is one of literacy: the fact that today’s students are not receiving a solid grounding in science, math, and engineering.



In preparing this article, I went through hundreds of reports, articles, and white papers from the past six decades. There were plenty of data, but there was also an extraordinary amount of inconsistency. Who exactly is a STEM worker: somebody with a bachelor’s degree or higher in a STEM discipline? Somebody whose job requires use of a STEM subject? What about someone who manages STEM workers? And which disciplines and industries fall under the STEM umbrella?



Such definitions obviously affect the counts. For example, in the United States, both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Commerce track the number of STEM jobs, but using different metrics. According to Commerce, 7.6 million individuals worked in STEM jobs in 2010, or about 5.5 percent of the U.S. workforce. That number includes professional and technical support occupations in the fields of computer science and mathematics, engineering, and life and physical sciences as well as management. The NSF, by contrast, counts 12.4 million science and engineering jobs in the United States, including a number of areas that the Commerce Department excludes, such as health-care workers (4.3 million) and psychologists and social scientists (518 000).



The STEM Crisis Through the Decades

Predictions of an impending shortage of scientists and engineers are nothing new


“Right now…there is a sufficiency of engineers, but one of our greatest industrial organizations, after careful study, predicts the entire absorption of this group by the end of 1936, with a probable shortage of available engineers at that time.”
—Collins P. Bliss,dean of New York University’s College of Engineering, 1934



“With mounting demands for scientists both for teaching and for research, we will enter the postwar period with a serious deficit in our trained scientific personnel.”
—Vannevar Bush,director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, 1945



“Our national welfare, our defense, our standard of living could all be jeopardized by the mismanagement of this supply and demand problem in the field of trained creative intelligence.”
—James Killian,president of MIT, 1954



“From 1972 through 1975, the expected demand for engineers will exceed not only the supply coming from American engineering schools, but also the combined supply from the United States and foreign countries, according to the [Engineering Manpower Commission] estimates.”
—John W. Graham Jr.,president of Clarkson College of Technology, 1970



“The electronics and information technology industries will be short more than 100 000 electrical and computer science engineers over the next five years.”
—American Electronics Association,1983

“Already spot shortages exist in some science fields in the United States, and unless dramatic changes are made in the way we educate all of our students, including our most talented, the shortages will increase.”
—U.S. Office of Educational Research and Improvement,1993



“U.S. companies face a severe shortfall of scientists and engineers with expertise to develop the next generation of breakthroughs.”
—Bill Gates,chairman of Microsoft, 2008



“There is a skills gap in this country—for every unemployed person in the United States, there are two STEM job postings. The gap will only widen if we don’t engage now to address STEM education at the elementary and high school levels.”
—Richard K. Templeton,chairman, president, and CEO of Texas Instruments, 2013





Such inconsistencies don’t just create confusion for numbers junkies like me; they also make rational policy discussions difficult. Depending on your point of view, you can easily cherry-pick data to bolster your argument.


Another surprise was the apparent mismatch between earning a STEM degree and having a STEM job. Of the 7.6 million STEM workers counted by the Commerce Department, only 3.3 million possess STEM degrees. Viewed another way, about 15 million U.S. residents hold at least a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline, but three-fourths of them—11.4 million—work outside of STEM.



The departure of STEM graduates to other fields starts early. In 2008, the NSF surveyed STEM graduates who’d earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 2006 and 2007. It found that 2 out of 10 were already working in non-STEM fields. And 10 years after receiving a STEM degree, 58 percent of STEM graduates had left the field, according to a 2011 study from Georgetown University.


The takeaway?

At least in the United States, you don’t need a STEM degree to get a STEM job, and if you do get a degree, you won’t necessarily work in that field after you graduate. If there is in fact a STEM worker shortage, wouldn’t you expect more people with STEM degrees to be filling those jobs? And if many STEM jobs can be filled by people who don’t have STEM degrees, then why the big push to get more students to pursue STEM?




Now consider the projections that suggest a STEM worker shortfall. One of the most cited in recent U.S. debates comes from the 2011 Georgetown University report mentioned above, by Anthony P. Carnevale, Nicole Smith, and Michelle Melton of the Center on Education and the Workforce. It estimated there will be slightly more than 2.4 million STEM job openings in the United States between 2008 and 2018, with 1.1 million newly created jobs and the rest to replace workers who retire or move to non-STEM fields; they conclude that there will be roughly 277 000 STEM vacancies per year.



But the Georgetown study did not fully account for the Great Recession. It projected a downturn in 2009 but then a steady increase in jobs beginning in 2010 and a return to normal by the year 2018. In fact, though, more than 370 000 science and engineering jobs in the United States were lost in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.



I don’t mean to single out this study for criticism; it just illustrates the difficulty of accurately predicting STEM demand and supply even a year or two out, let alone over a prolonged period. Highly competitive science- and technology-driven industries are volatile, where radical restructurings and boom-and-bust cycles have been the norm for decades. Many STEM jobs today are also targets for outsourcing or replacement by automation.



The nature of STEM work has also changed dramatically in the past several decades. In engineering, for instance, your job is no longer linked to a company but to a funded project. Long-term employment with a single company has been replaced by a series of de facto temporary positions that can quickly end when a project ends or the market shifts. To be sure, engineers in the 1950s were sometimes laid off during recessions, but they expected to be hired back when the economy picked up. That rarely happens today. And unlike in decades past, employers seldom offer generous education and training benefits to engineers to keep them current, so out-of-work engineers find they quickly become technologically obsolete.



Any of these factors can affect both short-term and longer-term demand for STEM workers, as well as for the particular skills those workers will need. The agencies that track science and engineering employment know this to be true. Buried in Chapter 3 of a 2012 NSF workforce study, for instance, you’ll find this caveat: “Projections of employment growth are plagued by uncertain assumptions and are notoriously difficult to make.”


So is there a shortfall of STEM workers or isn’t there?


The Georgetown study estimates that nearly two-thirds of the STEM job openings in the United States, or about 180 000 jobs per year, will require bachelor’s degrees. Now, if you apply the Commerce Department’s definition of STEM to the NSF’s annual count of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees, that means about 252 000 STEM graduates emerged in 2009. So even if all the STEM openings were entry-level positions and even if only new STEM bachelor’s holders could compete for them, that still leaves 70 000 graduates unable to get a job in their chosen field.



Of course, the pool of U.S. STEM workers is much bigger than that: It includes new STEM master’s and Ph.D. graduates (in 2009, around 80 000 and 25 000, respectively), STEM associate degree graduates (about 40 000), H-1B visa holders (more than 50 000), other immigrants and visa holders with STEM degrees, technical certificate holders, and non-STEM degree recipients looking to find STEM-related work. And then there’s the vast number of STEM degree holders who graduated in previous years or decades.



Even in the computer and IT industry, the sector that employs the most STEM workers and is expected to grow the most over the next 5 to 10 years, not everyone who wants a job can find one. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., found that more than a third of recent computer science graduates aren’t working in their chosen major; of that group, almost a third say the reason is that there are no jobs available.


Spot shortages for certain STEM specialists do crop up. For instance, the recent explosion in data analytics has sparked demand for data scientists in health care and retail. But the H-1B visa and similar immigrant hiring programs are meant to address such shortages. The problem is that students who are contemplating what field to specialize in can’t assume such shortages will still exist by the time they emerge from the educational pipeline.



What’s perhaps most perplexing about the claim of a STEM worker shortage is that many studies have directly contradicted it, including reports from Duke University, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Rand Corp. A 2004 Rand study, for example, stated that there was no evidence “that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon.”



That report argued that the best indicator of a shortfall would be a widespread rise in salaries throughout the STEM community. But the price of labor has not risen, as you would expect it to do if STEM workers were scarce. In computing and IT, wages have generally been stagnant for the past decade, according to the EPI and other analyses. And over the past 30 years, according to the Georgetown report, engineers’ and engineering technicians’ wages have grown the least of all STEM wages and also more slowly than those in non-STEM fields; while STEM workers as a group have seen wages rise 33 percent and non-STEM workers’ wages rose by 23 percent, engineering salaries grew by just 18 percent. The situation is even more grim for those who get a Ph.D. in science, math, or engineering. The Georgetown study states it succinctly: “At the highest levels of educational attainment, STEM wages are not competitive.”



Given all of the above, it is difficult to make a case that there has been, is, or will soon be a STEM labor shortage. “If there was really a STEM labor market crisis, you’d be seeing very different behaviors from companies,” notes Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York state. “You wouldn’t see companies cutting their retirement contributions, or hiring new workers and giving them worse benefits packages. Instead you would see signing bonuses, you’d see wage increases. You would see these companies really training their incumbent workers.”



“None of those things are observable,” Hira says. “In fact, they’re operating in the opposite way.”


So why the persistent anxiety that a STEM crisis exists?

Michael S. Teitelbaum, a Wertheim Fellow at Harvard Law School and a senior advisor to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has studied the phenomenon, and he says that in the United States the anxiety dates back to World War II. Ever since then it has tended to run in cycles that he calls “alarm, boom, and bust.” He says the cycle usually starts when “someone or some group sounds the alarm that there is a critical crisis of insufficient numbers of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians” and as a result the country “is in jeopardy of either a national security risk or of falling behind economically.” In the 1950s, he notes, Americans worried that the Soviet Union was producing 95 000 scientists and engineers a year while the United States was producing only about 57 000. In the 1980s, it was the perceived Japanese economic juggernaut that was the threat, and now it is China and India.




You’ll hear similar arguments made elsewhere. In India, the director general of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, Vijay Kumar Saraswat, recently noted that in his country, “a meagre four persons out of every 1000 are choosing S&T or research, as compared to 110 in Japan, 76 in Germany and Israel, 55 in USA, 46 in Korea and 8 in China.” Leaders in South Africa and Brazil cite similar statistics to show how they are likewise falling behind in the STEM race.



“The government responds either with money [for research] or, more recently, with visas to increase the number of STEM workers,” Teitelbaum says. “This continues for a number of years until the claims of a shortage turn out not to be true and a bust ensues.” Students who graduate during the bust, he says, are shocked to discover that “they can’t find jobs, or they find jobs but not stable ones.”



At the moment, we’re in the alarm-heading-toward-boom part of the cycle. According to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. government spends more than US $3 billion each year on 209 STEM-related initiatives overseen by 13 federal agencies. That’s about $100 for every U.S. student beyond primary school. In addition, major corporations are collectively spending millions to support STEM educational programs. And every U.S. state, along with a host of public and private universities, high schools, middle schools, and even primary schools, has its own STEM initiatives. The result is that many people’s fortunes are now tied to the STEM crisis, real or manufactured.



Clearly, powerful forces must be at work to perpetuate the cycle. One is obvious: the bottom line. Companies would rather not pay STEM professionals high salaries with lavish benefits, offer them training on the job, or guarantee them decades of stable employment. So having an oversupply of workers, whether domestically educated or imported, is to their benefit. It gives employers a larger pool from which they can pick the “best and the brightest,” and it helps keep wages in check. No less an authority than Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said as much when in 2007 he advocated boosting the number of skilled immigrants entering the United States so as to “suppress” the wages of their U.S. counterparts, which he considered too high.



Q. If a student came to you for advice, would you encourage him or her to pursue a career in STEM?IEEE Spectrum recently posed that question to a select group of IEEE members. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they would “strongly encourage” the student to take such a career path because it is “interesting and stimulating work” and one in which a person “can make a difference in the world.”

Governments also push the STEM myth because an abundance of scientists and engineers is widely viewed as an important engine for innovation and also for national defense. And the perception of a STEM crisis benefits higher education, says Ron Hira, because as “taxpayers subsidize more STEM education, that works in the interest of the universities” by allowing them to expand their enrollments.



An oversupply of STEM workers may also have a beneficial effect on the economy, says Georgetown’s Nicole Smith, one of the coauthors of the 2011 STEM study. If STEM graduates can’t find traditional STEM jobs, she says, “they will end up in other sectors of the economy and be productive.”



The problem with proclaiming a STEM shortage when one doesn’t exist is that such claims can actually create a shortage down the road, Teitelbaum says. When previous STEM cycles hit their “bust” phase, up-and-coming students took note and steered clear of those fields, as happened in computer science after the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.



Emphasizing STEM at the expense of other disciplines carries other risks. Without a good grounding in the arts, literature, and history, STEM students narrow their worldview—and their career options. In a 2011 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Norman Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, argued that point. “In my position as CEO of a firm employing over 80 000 engineers, I can testify that most were excellent engineers,” he wrote. “But the factor that most distinguished those who advanced in the organization was the ability to think broadly and read and write clearly.”




A broader view, I and many others would argue, is that everyone needs a solid grounding in science, engineering, and math. In that sense, there is indeed a shortage—a STEM knowledge shortage. To fill that shortage, you don’t necessarily need a college or university degree in a STEM discipline, but you do need to learn those subjects, and learn them well, from childhood until you head off to college or get a job. Improving everyone’s STEM skills would clearly be good for the workforce and for people’s employment prospects, for public policy debates, and for everyday tasks like balancing checkbooks and calculating risks. And, of course, when science, math, and engineering are taught well, they engage students’ intellectual curiosity about the world and how it works.



Many children born today are likely to live to be 100 and to have not just one distinct career but two or three by the time they retire at 80. Rather than spending our scarce resources on ending a mythical STEM shortage, we should figure out how to make all children literate in the sciences, technology, and the arts to give them the best foundation to pursue a career and then transition to new ones. And instead of continuing our current global obsession with STEM shortages, industry and government should focus on creating more STEM jobs that are enduring and satisfying as well.

_____________________________________________



The article we posted earlier about the agenda of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE installed in US around the time US FED and UNITED NATIONS were created came with the global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS unleashing the LONG GAME of killing all our US national, state, and local governance structures by allowing them to be made so corrupt, criminal, dysfunctional that our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE would hate our own government even though the US founding fathers built the best in world history I AM MAN AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT PEOPLE'S government.

CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA global banking pols super-sized all this dysfunction with ROBBER BARON few decades and our US PUBLIC K-UNIVERSITY was top priority in being made a FAILED STATE.  So, we had Bush era telling our US college students they needed graduate degrees since BS/BAs were not going to be good enough----creating massive student loan debt at the same time BUSH/OBAMA were outsourcing more and more high-skilled jobs.  CREATE MASSIVE DEBT WITH NO JOBS------people hate COLLEGE.





'How the Radical Right Played the Long Game and Won


  • Aug. 15, 2017
DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS
The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
By Nancy MacLean
334 pp. Viking. $28.





Buchanan, however, also had what MacLean calls a “stealth” agenda. He knew that the majority would never agree to being constrained. He therefore helped lead a push to undermine their trust in public institutions'.

This is now MOVING FORWARD to our US public K-12 schools.  We are shouting today that our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE will HATE what global banking 5% freemason/Greek players are installing with STEM K-12 for the same reasons.


So, global banking 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA are MOVING FORWARD a saturation in STEM KNOWING the future will not employ all most ALL of our US grads in STEM------AND they are installing LEARNING FORMATS in K-12 we already KNOW a super-majority of students do not respond well to.


Education

The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage


American students need to improve in math and science—but not because there's a surplus of jobs in those fields.


Michael S. Teitelbaum
Mar 19, 2014

Everyone knows that the United States has long suffered from widespread shortages in its science and engineering workforce, and that if continued these shortages will cause it to fall behind its major economic competitors. Everyone knows that these workforce shortages are due mainly to the myriad weaknesses of American K-12 education in science and mathematics, which international comparisons of student performance rank as average at best.



Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom. There is almost no debate in the mainstream. They echo from corporate CEO to corporate CEO, from lobbyist to lobbyist, from editorial writer to editorial writer. But what if what everyone knows is wrong? What if this conventional wisdom is just the same claims ricocheting in an echo chamber?



The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce. How can the conventional wisdom be so different from the empirical evidence? There are of course many complexities involved that cannot be addressed here.

The key points, though, are these:




Science and engineering occupations are at the leading edge of economic competitiveness in an increasingly globalized world, and science and engineering workforces of sufficient size and quality are essential for any 21st century economy to prosper. These professional workforces also are crucial for addressing challenges such as international security, global climate change, and domestic and global health. While they therefore are of great importance, college graduates employed in science and engineering occupations (as defined by the National Science Foundation) actually comprise only a small fraction of the workforce.



A compelling body of research is now available, from many leading academic researchers and from respected research organizations such as the National Bureau of Economic Research, the RAND Corporation, and the Urban Institute. No one has been able to find any evidence indicating current widespread labor market shortages or hiring difficulties in science and engineering occupations that require bachelors degrees or higher, although some are forecasting high growth in occupations that require post-high school training but not a bachelors degree. All have concluded that U.S. higher education produces far more science and engineering graduates annually than there are S&E job openings--the only disagreement is whether it is 100 percent or 200 percent more. Were there to be a genuine shortage at present, there would be evidence of employers raising wage offers to attract the scientists and engineers they want. But the evidence points in the other direction: Most studies report that real wages in many—but not all—science and engineering occupations have been flat or slow-growing, and unemployment as high or higher than in many comparably-skilled occupations.  



Because labor markets in science and engineering differ greatly across fields, industries, and time periods, it is easy to cherry-pick specific specialties that really are in short supply, at least in specific years and locations. But generalizing from these cases to the whole of U.S. science and engineering is perilous. Employment in small but expanding areas of information technology such as social media may be booming, while other larger occupations languish or are increasingly moved offshore. It is true that high-skilled professional occupations almost always experience unemployment rates far lower than those for the rest of the U.S. workforce, but unemployment among scientists and engineers is higher than in other professions such as physicians, dentists, lawyers, and registered nurses, and surprisingly high unemployment rates prevail for recent graduates even in fields with alleged serious “shortages” such as engineering (7.0 percent), computer science (7.8 percent) and information systems (11.7 percent).



Over time, new technologies, price changes, or sharp shifts in the labor market can create rapid rises in demand in a particular occupation. When that happens, the evidence shows that the market seems to adjust reasonably well. Entire occupations that were previously unattractive and declining, such as petroleum engineering in the 1980s and 1990s, have rather suddenly become attractive and high-paid—due to increased energy prices and new technologies for domestic extraction of oil and gas. Others, such as those linked to manufacturing and construction—industries in which well over half of all engineers are employed--have declined over the same period. Surprisingly, some of the largest and most heavily financed scientific fields, such as biomedical research, are among those with the least attractive career prospects, as a recent blue-ribbon advisory committee reported to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. Biomedical Ph.D.s are unusually lengthy and often require additional years of postdoctoral training, yet after completion those with such degrees experience labor market demand and remuneration that are relatively low.

Labor markets for scientists and engineers also differ geographically. Employer demand is far higher in a few hothouse metropolitan areas than in the rest of the country, especially during boom periods. Moreover recruitment of domestic professionals to these regions may be more difficult than in others when would-be hires discover that the remuneration employers are offering does not come close to compensating for far higher housing and other costs. According to the most recent data from the National Association of Realtors, Silicon Valley (metro San Jose) has the highest median house prices in the country, at $775,000—nearly four times higher than the national median.



Far from offering expanding attractive career opportunities, it seems that many, but not all, science and engineering careers are headed in the opposite direction: unstable careers, slow-growing wages, and high risk of jobs moving offshore or being filled by temporary workers from abroad. Recent science Ph.D.s often need to undertake three or more additional years in low-paid and temporary “postdoctoral” positions, but even then only a minority have realistic prospects of landing a coveted tenure-track academic position.



Among college-educated information technology workers under age 30, temporary workers from abroad constitute a large majority. Even in electrical and electronic engineering—an occupation that is right at the heart of high-tech innovation but that also has been heavily outsourced abroad--U.S. employment in 2013 declined to about 300,000, down 35,000 and over 10 percent, from 2012, and down from about 385,000 in 2002. Unemployment rates for electrical engineers rose to a surprisingly high 4.8 percent in 2013.



Claims of workforce shortages in science and engineering are hardly new. Indeed there have been no fewer than five “rounds” of “alarm/boom/bust” cycles since World War II. Each lasted about 10 to 15 years, and was initiated by alarms of “shortages,” followed by policies to increase the supply of scientists and engineers. Unfortunately most were followed by painful busts—mass layoffs, hiring freezes, and funding cuts that inflicted severe damage to careers of both mature professionals and the booming numbers of emerging graduates, while also discouraging new entrants to these fields.   
  • Round one from the decade immediately following World War II, waning a decade later.
  • Round two following the Sputnik launches in 1957 but waning sharply by the late 1960s, leading to a bust of serious magnitude in the 1970s.
  • Round three from the 1980s Reagan defense buildup, alarming Federal reports such as “A Nation at Risk” (1983), and new Federal funding for the “war on cancer.” Most of these had waned by the late 1980s, contributing to an ensuing bust in the early 1990s.
  • Round four from the mid-1990s, driven by concurrent booms in several high-tech industries (e.g. information technology, internet, telecommunications, biotech), followed by concurrent busts beginning around 2001.
  • Round five from the rapid doubling of the National Institutes of Health budget between 1998 and 2003, followed by a bust when subsequent funding flattened.
Each of these rounds was accompanied by excessive claims, and a notable lack of credible evidence. Rounds one through three were motivated by existential Cold War concerns, with advocates focused on expanding the numbers of US students pursuing higher education and careers in science and engineering. As I discovered while researching my book, during rounds four and five, after Cold War security concerns had waned, shortage claimants focused on visa policies that enabled U.S. employers and universities to recruit large numbers of temporary workers and graduate students from countries (especially China and India) that had rapid growth in science and engineering graduates but much lower income levels.



One thing we might reasonably conclude is that over the past six decades there has been no shortage of shortage claims. But what about the present and foreseeable future?


Since 2005 a series of influential reports have been produced by respected organizations and individuals, once again pointing to alarming current (or more commonly “looming”) shortages due to failing K-12 education. Three such reports were published in 2005 alone, by the Council on Competitiveness, by a special committee appointed by the National Research Council, and by a group of 15 business and technology organizations. Were these the opening salvos of the “alarm” stage of another 10-15 year cycle of alarm/boom/bust, the sixth such cycle since World War II? A deep recession with high unemployment has intervened, and in any case we would not be able to know for sure until another 5 or more years have passed.



These publications report correctly that the average performance of American K-12 students is middling in international testing. These data also show that this average performance results from large numbers of both high-performing and low-performing US students. The average national scores reflect both ends of the scale, yet there continues to be a large pool of top science and math students in the U.S. OECD data on “high-performing” students suggests that the U.S. produces about 33 percent of the world total in this category in the sciences, though only about 14 percent in mathematics.



No one should conclude from this that American K-12 science and math education does not need major improvement. Emphatically to the contrary: Every high school graduate should be competent in science and mathematics—essential to success in almost any 21st century occupation and to informed citizenship as well. But there is a big disconnect between this broad educational imperative and the numerically limited scope of the science and engineering workforce.  



Editorial writers in respected publications continue to assert that American student interest in these fields is low and declining. Yet according to a recent report from ACT, the college admissions testing service, “student interest in STEM [Science,Technology, Engineering, Mathematics] is high overall,” characteristic of some 48 percent of high school graduates tested in 2013. American high-school students are taking more math and science courses than ever before. Meanwhile UCLA’s respected annual surveys of entering college freshmen show that over the past several years nearly 40 percent have been reporting intentions to major in a STEM subject, not only a large fraction but also a substantial increase from past decades—this percentage was about 32 to 33 percent from 1995 to 2007.


Some of these students do change their minds and complete their degrees in different fields, but others shift into science and engineering majors. As noted earlier, the outcome is that the numbers of science and engineering graduates is at least double those being hired into such occupations each year.  



The evidence all points to high levels of student interest, high-performance levels among the students most likely to pursue majors and careers in science and engineering, and large numbers of graduates in these fields.



Ironically the vigorous claims of shortages concern occupations in science and engineering, yet manage to ignore or reject most of the science-based evidence on the subject. The repeated past cycles of “alarm/boom/bust” have misallocated public and private resources by periodically expanding higher education in science and engineering beyond levels for which there were attractive career opportunities. In so doing they produced large unintended costs for those talented students who devoted many years of advanced education to prepare for careers that turned out to be unattractive by the time they graduated, or who later experienced massive layoffs in mid-career with few prospects to be rehired.



Recent forecasts of looming shortages of scientists and engineers may prove to be self-fulfilling prophecies if they result in further declines in the attractiveness of science and engineering careers for talented American students.

___________________________________________



Who is MOVING FORWARD all this worst in world history education format in US?  It is enfolded in RACE TO TOP----COMMONER CORE-----installed during OBAMA era with CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS partnered with BUSH neo-cons----not able to do all this without our state GOVERNORS and state assemblies passing these education policies AND without our city/county councils and SCHOOL BOARDS pushing these education reform policies under the guise of needing all that global corporate funding simply to rebuild community public schools.

We have always had plenty of FEDERAL funding to build and maintain our public schools----we especially have those education funds NOW after these few decades of ROBBER BARON fraud of trillions of dollars needing to come back to our US cities and counties.

Here in Baltimore those frauds were driven by global banking BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION-----GREATER BALTIMORE COMMITTEE----GLOBAL HEDGE FUND CORPORATION JOHNS HOPKINS.  Lots of overseas global corporate campuses built with our US Federal public school funding these few decades.


Placing an emphasis for our US 99% of female students on STEM when we KNOW MOVING FORWARD has goals of taking women out of workforce competition for the most part-----is CYNICAL. 

BUT GLOBAL BANKING 5% FREEMASON/GREEK CLINTON/OBAMA ARE BEING SO ----'LEFT' SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE FOR WOMEN----OH, REALLY????



2 major investments support STEM education
By Laura Ascione, Managing Editor, Content Services, @eSN_Laura
August 9th, 2018




Most future jobs will involve STEM, and efforts at the K-12 level can help fill the future STEM pipeline
Schools may be out for summer, but STEM education efforts and investments are going strong.


STEM investments are critical for a number of reasons. First, many of the jobs today’s K-12 students will hold in the future don’t exist yet, and nearly all of them are predicted to require solid STEM skills. Second, there are large gender and racial gaps in the STEM workplace. These gaps start as early as middle school, when girls and minorities stop engaging with STEM lessons and extra-curricular activities.


Some educators seem to have it figured out, and they’re doing their part to fill the STEM pipeline with engaging lessons that grab students’ attention with real-world relevance. But in order to do this consistently, broad-scale investments, including funding, time, and advocacy, are needed.



Here’s the latest:
Carnegie Science Center educators have developed a STEM curriculum with Girl Up designed to inspire participants in Girl Up’s 2,200 clubs in 103 countries to consider careers in STEM fields.

The curriculum is part of a program supported by BNY Mellon to encourage Girl Up participants to consider STEM careers, introduce them to female STEM role models, and educate them on applying STEM solutions to real-world problems. It is the first large-scale project Girl Up has undertaken to involve its young leaders in STEM, and the goal of the program is to educate, inspire, and engage girls in STEM for social good. The curriculum developed by the Science Center will introduce girls to design thinking, the scientific method, and problem-solving skills fundamental to STEM and other fields. Girl Up leaders seek to reduce the gender gap in STEM fields, where men are more likely to pursue careers.


“The gender gap in STEM starts early, with many girls not being encouraged to pursue STEM careers. Girl Up’s partnership with BNY Mellon and Carnegie Science Center helps bridge that gap with an innovative approach that focuses on human-centered design thinking, while connecting girls to how STEM can be used to make a difference in the world,” says Anna Blue, Girl Up executive director.



The Girl Up STEM curriculum includes 10 activities that girls will be able to participate in with their Clubs. Once they complete the activities, they can participate in a STEM challenge for social good. Also, STEM boot camps that will take place this fall around the nation will include talks by local female STEM leaders who will encourage the girls to get involved in STEM in their communities. Girls will participate in hands-on skills-based training that provides STEM solutions for issues taking place in their communities.



Ann Metzger, the Henry Buhl, Jr., co-director of Carnegie Science Center, says developing this curriculum fits in with the Science Center’s efforts to increase the number of women pursuing STEM jobs. “We are gratified and honored that Girl Up chose us to participate in this important project,” Metzger says. “Girl Up has a proven record in providing leadership training for girls, and we are excited that its future programming will strengthen girls’ STEM skills. This will give girls more tools they can use to improve their futures and the futures of their communities.”




In other news, Microsoft Philanthropies announced a new partnership with the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) in which Microsoft will provide $2 million over three years to help CSTA build a stronger community to better serve computer science teachers.




“We’re thrilled that students of all ages are discovering the exciting–and critical–field of computer science. From the Hour of Code, to Minecraft Education, and even Advanced Placement Computer Sciences courses, participation rates are expanding,” says Mary Snapp, corporate vice president and lead for Microsoft Philanthropies, in a LinkedIn post. “This surge of student interest, combined with the premium our economy places on technology skill of all kinds, requires us to do all we can to ensure every student has access to computer science courses. And it all starts with our teachers.”



Microsoft Philanthropies also focuses on computer science education through its Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program, which pairs technology-industry volunteers with classroom teachers to team-teach computer science in 350 U.S. high schools.


“While technology can be a powerful learning tool, nothing can replace the expertise, guidance, and encouragement that teachers provide to students each day of the school year,” Snapp writes. “I remember my own favorite teachers who helped me see a world beyond the rural town in which I grew up. I would guess that nearly everyone has a similar story. We thank our teachers and we hope that this investment in computer science teachers, through CSTA, empowers more educators to do what they do best: make a positive difference in the lives of students.”


_______________________________________________



NO ONE is a bigger raging global banking 5% freemason/Greek player MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD COMMONER CORE RACE TO TOP knowing the goal will kill 99% of US and global citizens' ability to have that strong, first world, developed nation PUBLIC K-UNIVERSITY that made Americans BEST IN WORLD in education attainment-----then these two FAKE 'LEFT' POPULIST players. Sanders is simply a Clinton neo-liberal morphing into far-right wing LIBERTARIAN MARXISM pretending OUR REVOLUTION is populist for our US 99% when it is for global 1% only-----and AFT WEINGARTEN has been raging NEO-LIBERAL EDUCATION partnered with Bill and Hillary---Bill Gates MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD.



We discuss often why these education policies are FAKE NEWS.


'• Maintaining federal support for afterschool programs provided through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program.
• The inclusion of wrap-around support services like health, mental health, nutrition and family supports'.



So, our choices in US politics are BAD whether voting right wing REPUBLICAN----our left wing DEMOCRAT and even our third and fourth parties are stacked with global banking 5% farm team players.


TO STOP MOVING FORWARD OUR US 99% BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN MUST COME TOGETHER VS GLOBAL 1% WITH ROLLING PEACEFUL PROTESTS IN ALL US CITIES DEEMED US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES-----LET'S GET RID OF THESE GLOBAL BANKING PLAYER POLS BY DANCING IN THE STREET IN PROTEST.

Sanders making WEINGARTNEN a champion for our US 99% in education ---THAT IS AN INSULT to both teachers and students.


Sen. Bernie Sanders: Teachers Are Part of the 'Political Revolution'

By Madeline Will on July 15, 2018 1:07 PM

Pittsburgh, Penn.
Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke to a receptive crowd here at the American Federation of Teachers' biennial convention, saying there was a political revolution "sweeping across this country." 

Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, condemned many of the president's actions and praised recent activism among workers, including the teacher strikes and protests in about six states this spring. He spoke of a changing tide among public opinion for "radical" ideas, such as tuition-free college education. That policy proposal was part of his campaign for president in 2016. 


"The American people are going to make Donald Trump a one-term president," he said to huge applause. "We intend in the 2018 midterm elections to ... take back the House and the Senate."


Sanders, who ran against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary presidential election, is widely expected to run for president in 2020, though he has not announced his candidacy. A New York Times article published today looked at how both Warren and Sanders were preparing for a 2020 campaign, along with a slew of other hopefuls. (Warren addressed delegates at the AFT convention yesterday, and Clinton spoke on the opening day of the conference.) 


In his speech, Sanders criticized wealth inequality, saying that the "top 25 hedge-fund managers of Wall Street make more money than all of the kindergarten teachers in this country combined." 


He also slammed Trump for his social policies, including the child-separation policy at the U.S.-Mexican border. 


"I know every day, you tell your students, you say to your kids: Tell the truth," Sanders said. "You say to your kids: Don't be bullies. And what kind of terrible example is he setting to the children of this country?"


Sanders, who pledged to fight against Trump's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, also criticized many of the Supreme Court's decisions, including the recent decision that prohibited "agency" or "fair share" fees that unions in 22 states had been charging to nonmembers to cover the cost of collective bargaining. 



"They have recently given us the disastrous Janus decision," Sanders said to boos. "Well, you know, sometimes decisions and actions have unintended consequences, and I have a feeling that those who thought that the Janus decision would hurt the trade unions in this country may be in for a big surprise. It may end up being one of those decisions that helps us rebuild the trade union movement in America."



That line generated a standing ovation among the crowd, as did several other lines throughout his speech. Delegates chanted, "Bernie, Bernie," at the end of his speech. In 2016, the AFT and the other major national teacher's union, the National Education Association, both endorsed Clinton over Sanders—a controversial decision among the delegates, many of whom favored Sanders. Today, AFT President Randi Weingarten said Sanders has "inspired an entire generation" and added that many people have "felt the Bern more and more over those past two years ... including myself."


Sanders concluded his speech by saying, "We are not going back, we are going forward."

INDEED, BERNIE----YOUR REVOLUTION IS MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1%.


"As part of this political revolution, teachers are standing up and leading the fight for education reform," he said. "Who would have thought that in West Virginia or Kentucky, in Oklahoma, teachers are demanding decent education for our kids and are taking on right-wing political establishments? Thank you, teachers." 


Sanders also praised a wave of progressive candidates who are running in the 2018 midterm elections, including Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City. (Sanders will soon head to Kansas with Ocasio-Cortez to campaign for other Democratic congressional candidates, according to the Washington Post.) 



In fact, after Sanders' speech, two campaigning Democrats delivered remarks, as well: Rep. Conor Lamb, from Pennsylvania, and Randy Bryce, who is running for retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan's seat in Wisconsin. Both candidates, but particularly Bryce, a former union activist, were warmly received by the crowd.


"Our job now as is never before is to stand up, fight back, and create the nation we can become," Sanders concluded to the cheering educators. 

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August 28th, 2018

8/28/2018

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We will take this week to discuss in detail public policy issues from yesterday's articles.  First, we want to acknowledge everyone knows robotics and AI will kill a tremendous number of job categories across all industries.  Global banking 1% are using media and corporate EVIDENCE-BASED DATA to sell WINNERS AND LOSERS in all these TRANSFORMATIVE economic policies while having goals of killing all 99% of US and global labor pool citizens.

We want to remind for example our US 99% white men who killed US labor unions and moved corporate factories overseas?  REAGAN/CLINTON two raging global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS.  Who are TRUMP/HILLARY?  They are the same global banking 1% both ready to kill our US 99% of white men.  Please do not fall for the FAKE WINNERS/LOSERS for another generation.  These few decades have seen our GBLT and black 99% of US citizens as global banking 5% freemason/Greek winners-----MOVING FORWARD will indeed make them great big LOSERS.

We shared yesterday a video from TEXAS of a NEW TECHNOLOGY school welcoming its students back with two school employees dressed in great big robot costumes.  One thing we KNOW is a goal of global banking 1%-----


ROBOTS WILL BE SUPERVISORS OVERSEEING WORKSITE

So, when our US public K-12 brings out giant robot costumes to greet our US 99% of students ----they are conditioning our US students to sharing space with robots which in many cases will subordinate them as future workers.

One thing we KNOW about TEXAS education reform as is true here in BALTIMORE----most of those getting jobs as TEACHERS are tied to global private teaching corporations like TEACH FOR AMERICA.  Private teaching staff working for a GLOBAL CORPORATION will not be a PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER.



When our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE allow it to be OK to end status of TEACHERS as PUBLIC EMPLOYEES----when our US labor unions keep saying its OK to privatize all that is US public sector as long as they can organize the outsourced and global corporate privatized employees-----all US 99% WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens will be LOSERS.





Automation Is Killing, Creating and Transforming Jobs

As demands for certain skills rise, employees will work side by side with robots, experts predict

By Steve Bates August 24, 2016

An unstoppable wave of automation is transforming the workplace. While many low-skill jobs are being eliminated, positions demanding higher skills are being created. Most jobs in existence today will add and lose specific functions in the future as robots and other forms of technology take on routine tasks and free humans to focus more on creative and analytic efforts, according to experts.


It will be a messy transition. It will be particularly painful for workers who lose their jobs and for employers that fail to recognize where automation fits into their operations.

Labor market experts disagree about how many American jobs will be lost to automation. A 2013 report by Oxford University researchers concluded that about 47 percent of total U.S. employment is at risk because of automation. A 2015 report by McKinsey & Co. forecast that automation could eliminate as much as 45 percent of work activities currently performed in the U.S.

Forrester Research predicts that robots—all forms of automation, machine learning and intelligent machines—will replace 16 percent of American jobs but will create the equivalent of 9 percent of those jobs by 2025. That would represent a net loss of 7 percent of jobs.

"This transition has, in fact, been going on for decades," said a 2016 Forrester report, The Future Of White-Collar Work: Sharing Your Cubicle With Robots. For example, software "bots" are already scheduling humans' meetings online, handling travel request forms and processing employment contracts. Intelligent devices are helping manage warehouses and parking garages to boost efficiency. IBM's supercomputer Watson, which defeated humans on the quiz show "Jeopardy," is working with doctors to improve diagnoses of patients' diseases.

Among the traditional jobs most endangered by automation are travel agent, meter reader, flight attendant, lumberjack, librarian and newspaper reporter.

The loss of jobs is a particularly hot issue in the 2016 elections. Labor market experts point to automation and globalization as the primary reasons for jobs being eliminated or shifted overseas. They note that transformations such as these have happened frequently during history.


"For centuries, humans have feared machines," said Harry J. Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. "Their worst fears have never turned out to be true." Experts say that while there are always winners and losers in these transitions, the big-picture view is that technology will boost productivity and fuel the economy.


Shifting Roles

Occupations focusing on human interaction, such as doctor, nurse and massage therapist, will be among those most immune to being replaced by robots. Flesh-and-blood artists, designers, athletes and entertainers also will retain a place in society. New jobs attributable to the rise of automation will include software developers and managers who can integrate automation technology into existing business models. People will work directly with robots to help them learn new functions or handle their tasks better, though the robots might not look like humans and the human-robot communication will occur mostly via keyboard.


The shifting of job tasks from humans to robots will require a massive change in job descriptions, not to mention in talent acquisition strategies. According to Forrester, automation will change every job category by at least 25 percent as soon as 2019. "Few firms are prepared for their [cognitive tipping points], which will lead to a restructuring of work nearly as profound as the transition from the agricultural age to the industrial age," said its 2016 report.


 The Training Challenge

Training future employees—and retraining current ones—will be an immense challenge in the face of the transformation. Experts say that workers will need skills related to a specific job function as well as broader competencies.


"Thriving in today's fast-changing world requires breadth of skills rooted in academic competencies such as literacy, numeracy and science but also including things such as teamwork, critical thinking, communication, persistence and creativity," according to the 2016 report Skills for a Changing World from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank.


"Back in the 1970s, you took part of yourself to work. Now you take the whole person to work," said Anthony P. Carnevale, Ph.D., director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. "There's a much broader range of human competencies necessary."

For decades, employers have hired young people and trained them to do a particular job. Today, however, employers are expecting job applicants to be better prepared for jobs with highly technical requirements.


"Students can't learn everything once they get to the job," said Mary V.L. Wright, senior director of national career education advocacy group Jobs for the Future.
Educational systems can't turn on a dime, but "employers can help colleges figure out 'What are the competencies we require for this position' and 'Here's how we want you to teach them,' " said Angela Hanks, associate director of workforce development policy at the Center for American Progress, a progressive public-policy advocacy organization.


"We need to contextualize skills to the needs of today's economy," said Maria Flynn, senior vice president of Jobs for the Future. She said that, to minimize disruption, employers "can embed learning in an individual's job to prepare them for the next job."
Retraining displaced workers is particularly difficult. Some of them lack the fundamental skills that are prerequisites to learning today's sophisticated job functions. Training programs are fragmented, and many are not matched closely to the emerging needs of employers.


"How do you prepare people for jobs that are not really there yet?" Hanks asked.

While some local and regional job training partnerships involving employers have shown great promise—and apprenticeships are drawing increasing interest from employers—the best programs are not large and widespread enough to make a big dent in the ranks of the unemployed.

Experts say it's difficult to predict exactly how the technology revolution will play out. But they offer some solace to employers: Don't expect to see robots asking for raises or organizing their own labor unions anytime soon.


______________________________________



We notice immediately lots of FALSE FLAGS in the article above.  First, the article is written by a global HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT CORPORATION-----so, it will be FAR-RIGHT WING global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS----and not US 99% WE THE PEOPLE of AMERICA.  This is confirmed by the sources throughout this article----BROOKINGS INSTITUTE----GEORGETOWN/OXFORD------CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS------all far-right wing global banking 1% NEO-LIBERAL institutions. So, there is nothing in this article that is REAL INFORMATION----that has any social benefit to any population group.


The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)



is the world’s largest HR professional society, representing 300,000 members in more than 165 countries. For nearly seven decades, the Society has been the leading provider of resources serving the needs of HR professionals and advancing the practice of human resource management. SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China, India and United Arab Emirates.




For more information about SHRM, see the 2017 State of the Society address and News About SHRM.


The SHRM 2017 State of the Society Report and accompanying SHRM 2016 Audited Financial Statement highlight our goals, recent accomplishments and how we are delivering on our mission. 

It is no secret these few decades global banking 5% freemason/Greek player pols have dismantled what has been 300 years of broadly educating US students from K-12 with higher education bringing more specialization-----and CORPORATIONS having responsibility to train on the job for specific job duties.  There is no way to have our US citizens graduate ready to do a specific job at a time when corporations are being allowed to push employees into rotating job categories unless they are FOREVER APPRENTICED.


"Back in the 1970s, you took part of yourself to work. Now you take the whole person to work," said Anthony P. Carnevale, Ph.D., director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

So, that is what GEORGETOWN GLOBAL CORPORATION and Carnevale is stating above.  Baby boomers KNOW back in 1970s we brought OUR WHOLE PERSON TO WORK having no idea what this academic is trying to relate.

Our 99% WE THE PEOPLE would not go to a Georgetown University Center on EDUCATION IN WORKPLACE to find REAL INFORMATION on what our 99% WE THE PEOPLE need as education public policy.  We go there to see what global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS are MOVING FORWARD TOWARDS ONE WORLD AMERICA AS A COLONIAL ENTITY.


Educational systems can't turn on a dime, but "employers can help colleges figure out 'What are the competencies we require for this position' and 'Here's how we want you to teach them,' " said Angela Hanks, associate director of workforce development policy at the Center for American Progress, a progressive public-policy advocacy organization.

THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS was created by global banking 1% Clinton neo-liberals---it is a FAR-RIGHT WING think tank--our 99% WE THE PEOPLE would not go there to find REAL INFORMATION on policy stances GOOD for our US citizens OR our new immigrant citizens.


Business




Robots are killing jobs after all, apparently: One droid equals 5.6 workers



So much for the utopian techno future, according to this study

By Thomas Claburn in San Francisco 28 Mar 2017 at 22:22

Industrial robots are depressing wages and increasing unemployment, according to a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private, non-profit, non-partisan research organization in America.



Written by MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo, "Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets" appears only days after Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin dismissed the possibility of automated systems taking jobs from people, saying, "It's not even on our radar screen."



Similar to the cosmological conundrum about whether the universe will continue expanding indefinitely or collapse upon itself, the impact of automation and AI on human employment is the subject of ongoing debate about whether automated systems will create more jobs than they destroy.


Among technology advocates, there's predictable optimism. Robert D Atkinson, president and founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, has gone so far as to place a bet through the Long Now Foundation that by June of 2025 the labor force participation rate and unemployment rate, reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, will respectively be above 60 per cent and below 7.5 per cent.



"The 'robots are killing our jobs' proponents miss the fact that automation lowers prices (or raises wages), which in turn spurs increased demand for goods and services, and hence labor," he states in his argument.



If Acemoglu and Restrepo are correct, however, that may not be a wise bet. The researchers analyzed how the increase in industrial robot usage between 1990 and 2007 affected US local labor markets.


These robots are fully autonomous machines that operate without human intervention, doing tasks that at some point in the past were done manually, such as welding, painting, product assembly, moving materials, and packaging.



There are presently somewhere between 1.5 and 1.75 million industrial robots operating around the globe, according to the International Federation of Robotics. The auto industry uses about 39 per cent of such robots, followed by the electronics industry (19 per cent), metal product manufacturing (9 per cent), and the plastics and chemicals industry (9 percent), according to the researchers.



Acemoglu and Restrepo found that in areas exposed to industrial robots, between 1990 and 2007, "both employment and wages decline in a robust and significant manner (compared to other less exposed areas)."



Using the researcher's preferred parameters, "one more robot per thousand workers reduces aggregate employment to population ratio by about 0.34 percentage points." In other words, every new robot added to a given commuting zone reduces employment by 5.6 workers. And the researchers project that the number of industrial robots will reach between 4 and 6 million by 2025.



If the number of industrial robots quadruples by 2025, the researchers expect 0.94 to 1.76 per cent lower employment-to-population ratio and 1.3 to 2.6 per cent lower wage growth between 2015 and 2025.


What needs to be done


Technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic automation will erase 16 per cent of US jobs by 2025, research consultancy Forrester said [paywalled] last year, while adding to the job count by 9 per cent over the same period.


In an email to The Register, Daron Acemoglu suggested two policy responses: labor market adjustment assistance, which includes retraining programs for people displaced by robots; and overhauling the education system, to teach skills that are more relevant to the times.



Asked about how automation might affect jobs that involve more fluid tasks and responsibilities, Acemoglu said it was unclear how technology will affect work that isn't easily programmed, but suggested it would be unwise to dismiss automation's impact on even complex occupations.



"We don't see similar negative effects from general IT capital (eg, software and hardware)," he said. "So it's difficult to project into the future, say about the effects of artificial intelligence. But given what we know about artificial intelligence, this technology also creates ample room for major dislocations. We have to be prepared."




Acemoglu said that as with past technological innovation, robotics is creating productivity growth.
"What it is not doing is to create jobs," he said.

"There might be several reasons for this:
  1. We are still at the beginning of this process. It took several decades for the new spinning and weaving technologies of the British Industrial Revolution to start creating jobs and higher wages.
  2. Many other technologies, such as computers, were displacing some workers but also complementing some other workers quite strongly (eg, computers were highly complementary to college graduates, middle managers and engineers). Robots may be less clearly complementary to existing sets of skills available in the workforce.
  3. We may be facing bottlenecks in other areas that are slowing down the creation of new jobs." ®

_________________________________________

The major attack on our US sovereign economy these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was not only sending our US corporations overseas to be enfolded into global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS multi-national corporations----it was expanding that 5% freemason/Greek player network creating PATRONAGE ECONOMY where players have been PAID NOT TO WORK-----players have been subsidized in FAKE BUSINESSES just to keep them feeling they are WINNERS as they are brought in to be those ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT PLAYERS SACKING AND LOOTING US CIVIL SOCIETY.  These few decades have the largest employer in US being FAKE MONEY HANDOUTS.

We KNOW our US 5% freemason/Greek players are seeing the light as this TUNNEL of PLAYER LOVE is coming to an end.  No matter how many time national media pretends policies like BASIC INCOME will continue to pay our US 5% freemason/Greek players to DO NOTHING-----it will not.



'To support those workers, he hopes the country will embrace portable benefits, streamline regulations, invest in training and skills, and build more housing'.

There is a reason here in Baltimore most NEW SCHOOLS are ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS owned by global investment firms controlled by global HOPKINS corporation.  The goal as we said is sending our MIDDLE SCHOOL students into the workplace under the guise of APPRENTICESHIPS----all the while being FREE LABOR.

All of the infrastructure development in Baltimore has underground TECHNOLOGY GRID cables serving only global corporate campuses with no expectation our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens will be able to afford access or be ALLOWED access.  There is NO EXPECTATION OF A GIG ECONOMY.


Our US 99% of WE THE FREEMASON/GREEK 5% PLAYERS better WAKE UP----we read two decades ago that the ME GENERATION ---that being those dastardly PLAYERS was ending.   That is what the UNITED NATIONS #ME TOO group for global banking PLAYERS are trying to do----it AIN'T HAPPENING.


Biz & Tech // Business



Why the robot apocalypse won’t kill all gig economy jobs
Carolyn Said June 16, 2018

Updated: Aug. 6, 2018 2:47 p.m.



  • arrell Ross marries LeAnn and Douglas Coto at the Martinelli Event Center in Livermore. The school principal finds wedding gigs through Thumbtack.
    Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
  • 2 of 5
    Marco Zappacosta is the CEO of Thumbtack, a platform for a diverse set of professionals, in San Francisco, Calif. on Monday, June 11, 2018.
    Photo: Liz Moughon / The Chronicle
  • 3 of 5
    A statement that Pastor Darrell Ross will read as he officiates the wedding of LeAnn Macias and Douglas Coto at the Martinelli Event Center in Livermore.
    Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
  • 4 of 5
    Pastor Darrell Ross heads to officiate the wedding between LeAnn Macias and Douglas Coto at the Martinelli Event Center in Livermore.
    Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
  • 5 of 5
    A diverse set of professionals works at Thumbtack in San Francisco.
    Photo: Liz Moughon / The Chronicle

Robots won’t eat all the jobs, says Marco Zappacosta, the CEO and co-founder of Thumbtack, a marketplace for service professionals from plumbers to yoga teachers to personal trainers. While automation is expected to replace many positions, he thinks huge growth will come in the types of local trades that Thumbtack showcases — work that cannot be sent offshore or done by machines.



To support those workers, he hopes the country will embrace portable benefits, streamline regulations, invest in training and skills, and build more housing.


Thumbtack has more than 200,000 people offering more than a thousand types of services. The lion’s share do home-related work: maintenance, construction and systems. Events, health and wellness, business systems and education are also popular.


People peddling their services on Thumbtack say it helps them cast a wide net to reach potential clients, eliminating one of the biggest hassles of being an independent professional.


Darrell Ross, an Oakland high school principal, does double duty as a wedding officiant, for instance, finding jobs on Thumbtack. His five-star ratings have led to about two wedding gigs a month. The site is an efficient way to reach people, he said.

“I believe in love, want to promote love, and this is a great way to bring people together to share a lifetime of joy, happiness and love,” said Ross, an ordained Christian minister since college.


This interview with Zappacosta has been edited for length and clarity.


Q: How did Thumbtack start?


A: My co-founders (Jonathan Swanson and Sander Daniels) and I went hunting for the biggest problem that technology could solve. It was a banal observation: Why is it so damn hard to hire a plumber? It’s not that there aren’t hard-working professionals; it’s a matchmaking problem. In 2008-09, all we saw were online versions of offline products: directories and classified links. You were still on the hook for calling, saying, “Can you do this?” The missing link was a true marketplace experience, helping customers connect with the right pro.



Q: There’s a lot of talk about (artificial intelligence) and automation killing jobs. Why do you say the future of work isn’t as bleak as predicted?


A: The doom-and-gloom narrative is easy to tell and fun to scare people with. Thumbtack has a perch to see what will be left: The nonroutine, nontradable jobs are the future of work. They’re growing, providing great wages and can be the source of purpose for people for a long time to come.


Q: What are some examples?


A: When a human being is providing service to the real world. All of health care and education. Florist, personal trainer, social worker, mechanic, interior decorator, electrician, engineer. Local services are expected to be 91 percent of all jobs created in the next decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.


Q: Will all these future jobs be small businesses?


A: Industries growing over the next decade will overwhelmingly be comprised of small firms or self-employed workers, basically local services. It’s easy to understand: Most plumbers, housekeepers, personal trainers don’t work for big conglomerates. There aren’t economies of scale like in manufacturing.


Q: What do workers lose by not being employees?


A: Being part of a big firm provides benefits and income smoothing. Thumbtack provides income smoothing by providing a constant stream of customers. Etsy, Shopify, other platforms empower local professionals and small businesses to do more, and through that to employ more. That’s gotten lost in the conversation about automation replacing all the work.

Software engineer Bryan Jensen works at the Thumbtack offices in San Francisco.
Photo: Photos by Liz Moughon / The Chronicle




Q: Isn’t a lot of gig work essentially low-wage McJobs?


A: Average Thumbtack workers make more than $70 an hour; that’s middle-class employment right there. About two-thirds of Thumbtack professionals do the work as their primary form of employment.

WHAT HAPPENS AS US MIDDLE-MERELY RICH DISAPPEAR---WHO IS DOING THAT HIRING AND WILL THEY REALLY BE PAYING THAT US QUALITY WAGE?  OF COURSE NOT.



Uber (and) Lyft are the inverse; about 80 percent of drivers do it very part time. What Uber (and) Lyft have done for labor is of immense value. Almost every adult being able to tap into a secondary source of income is very powerful. They’re great sources of secondary short-term income. But elevating that as the future of work is a mistake. They are doing everything they can to automate away the main cost structure of their business: the drivers.


Q: What’s the impact of the recent California Supreme Court ruling making it harder to classify gig workers as independent contractors rather than employees?


A: “Gig economy” has become a muddied term. Gig work has a long history: journalists, Hollywood workers, consultants — many, many industries already operate this way. Gig work itself is not a sign of low wages or unstable income. It’s just industries where you serve a number of varied clients over time, not one salary. We think gig work can be highly remunerative.
Q: How are you changing the gig economy?



A: The sharing economy to date has been about sharing capital assets: cars, home, apartments. But the biggest underutilized asset is human talent. We give that talent a market, a place to showcase itself, find customers, ultimately turning time into money. In doing that, we empower a huge range of workers.


People have talent, but often don’t have ... skill sets to find a market for that; to market themselves, create a web page, drive clients, do small business administration. We’re making it more viable to be self-employed.



Q: What policies would best help support the gig economy?


A: One of the best would be benefits portability. The Affordable Care Act already provides that for health insurance. Lots of other benefits need to decouple from formal employment. By articulating that the future of work will be small businesses, (we can) support these workers with rights, privileges and benefits.


Society should say disability insurance, tax-advantaged retirement accounts, access to health care should be provided to all workers, not just those who have jobs at companies. It’s philosophically key to decouple benefits from formal employment.


Q: What other policy changes are needed?


A: Make regulation less burdensome for small businesses. It’s not that they should be more- or less-regulated; it’s about ease of compliance. As the size goes down, the cost of compliance goes up. A big company has a compliance department and an army of lawyers and accountants. For a two-person roofing company in Omaha dealing with workers’ comp for the first time, it’s terrifying. It arguably deters people from hiring more.


Q: You’ve said that housing is linked to job growth, too.


A: Local is very important for service jobs. If you can’t live somewhere because it costs too much, you can’t work there. Housing policy needs to enable more home construction and lower home prices. It’s obvious: There aren’t enough homes, so we need to build more. We know how. Plenty of contractors would like to do it. Homeowners would pay for them. We just have to enable it.



Q: How do macro trends affect the gig economy?

It arose during the economic downturn when jobs were scarce. Now unemployment is at historic lows.



A: The gig economy isn’t a monolith. As the macro economy continues to strengthen, that might mean fewer people going to ... platforms like Uber and TaskRabbit. But it’s good for Thumbtack, because as incomes rise, you see more consumption of local services.




Q: What are unusual or new jobs on Thumbtack?


A: Life coach, which isn’t even recognized by the (Bureau of Labor Statistics) as an occupation but has blown up over the past five to 10 years, with an estimated 18,000 life coaches in the U.S. Personal trainers 30 years ago weren’t recognized by the government; it was an obscure niche industry. Other surprising ones: skateboard instructor, balloon artist.


Very few categories are as big as this trillion dollars of spending on local services, almost completely offline with no digital revolution for how they are discovered and transacted. I’d bet that in the next five to 10 years you are more likely to find and hire professionals online.
______________________________________________



We want to remind our US 99% and our new to US immigrants that since CLINTON era 1990s we have listened to national media and global banking Wall Street tell us where the shortfalls in US economy were as regards job categories followed by our US universities all aligning curricula around those shortages while our US college grads were left unable to get jobs in their fields because MOVING FORWARD always intended to bring global labor pool 99% to US for those jobs.  We had a big push for NURSES in 1990s after which our US nursing grads could not find steady work

This same global banking economic structure is doing the same today ----this time with TECHNOLOGY having all our US K-university geared towards those job degrees while already bringing in global labor pool for the shrinking number of jobs.  So, when our US public K-12 and these new corporate school buildings are opening to great fanfare------where are our US 99% of WE THE STUDENTS going after all that NON-EDUCATION-----STEM MINUS ALL THAT IS BROAD HUMANITIES AND LIBERAL ARTS needed to be CITIZENS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS?


'The so-called gig economy will cease to exist in 20 years, according to a new report from venture-backed start-up Thumbtack, an online marketplace that helps skilled workers find customers'.

We already KNOW there will be no GIG ECONOMY----there will be no LOCAL STARTUP TECHNOLOGY companies---there will not be FAKE PATRONAGE BUSINESSES for future 5% freemason/Greek players.


Below we see the WORLD BANK ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE Roosevelt Institution filled with global banking 5% players PRETENDING to be 'left' social progressive.  This is where ROBERT REICH and all those far-right wing global banking OUR REVOLUTION for only the global 1% FAKE 99% POPULISTS  hang out.

Here we see SOCIAL EQUITY at DUKE UNIVERSITY-----Duke University was of course top gun in supplying US citizens in building overseas FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES filled with the most brutal, enslaving, global human slave trafficing structures in world history-------below telling our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE----

DON'T WORRY---BE HAPPY-----at the same time pushing BASIC INCOME because what this THINK TANK says is FAKE NEWS.
THE ROOSEVELT INSTITUTION is far-right wing global banking 1% ONE WORLD----we do not want our US young adults and new immigrants FOOLED by propaganda our US public K-university allows to go unchecked.


CREATIVE COMMONS COPYRIGHT |


ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE.ORG

DON’T FEAR THE ROBOTS:

Why Automation Doesn’t Mean the End of Work

CREATIVE COMMONS COPYRIGHT | ROOSEVELTINSTITUTE.ORG

About the Author

Mark Paul is a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, where he works on the 21st Century Economy project, and a Postdoctoral Associate at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.



His current research is focused on understanding the causes and consequences of inequality and assessing and designing remedies to address inequality. He will be starting as an assistant professor of economics at the New College of Florida in the fall of 2018.



Acknowledgments

The author thanks Dean Baker, Josh Bivens, Lenore Palladino, Frank Pasquale, and Todd Tucker for their comments and insight.

Executive Summary
/
The narrative that large-scale automation will imminently lead to mass unemployment and economic
insecurity has become prevalent in the media. As the story goes, we are on the cusp of a major technological change that will drastically alter the nature of work, leave masses unemployed, and exacerbate already high levels of economic inequality.



In this paper, we argue that this narrative detracts from the bigger underlying problems with the rules of
our economy and the distributional consequences of increased automation under current institutional
arrangements.



First, we find that there is little evidence to suggest that the U.S. economy is approaching massive
technological change:
productivity levels are remarkably low and capital investment is significantly
slower than would be expected under impending technological upheaval.
Second, historical evidence
suggests that even if we were on the verge of rapid technological change, mass unemployment would
not be inevitable. In the past, the long-term effects of technological advancement on employment have
been positive.
Technology has allowed workers to do their jobs better and faster, which in turn, increased
output and raised living standards.




As with any major structural shift in the economy, technological change has the potential to create job
loss in the short term but does not necessarily lead to net job destruction in the long term. The amount of
work available is not a fixed quantity, and technology can complement labor, instead of substitute for it,
making workers more productive rather than simply replacing them. The job gains from technology often
outpace the job losses over time and allow workers to focus on better, high-productivity jobs.


However, we should not trivialize the costs of this kind of economic transition for workers in the
short term, nor can we ignore the structural disadvantages in today’s economy that define economic
outcomes. Workers are right to be concerned about the negative effects of technological change because
the historical link between labor productivity and wages, which grew side-by-side for most of the
20th century, is broken.
In the past, productivity growth from technological innovation led to shared prosperity for workers, including higher wages and better living standards. When that link broke, it changed how the economic pie was divided.


In order to fix this broken link, we propose a few policy changes that would ensure that economic growth
from technological change benefits everyone:

NEITHER OF THESE POLICY GOALS WILL DO ANYTHING FOR OUR US 99% AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO MOVE FORWARD ONE WORLD US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES AND ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE WORLD BANK KNOWS THIS.

•
Full employment: The U.S. government should recommit to pursuing full employment.
Implementing full employment would create a significantly tighter labor market, which
would both encourage technological advance and nullify the potential negative effects of
technology on workers.
•
Revised intellectual property law: Intellectual property law is a primary reason why
technological advances currently exacerbate inequality.
While a first step would be
reducing the lengths of patents and copyright protections, more substantial measures
should also be pursued.

__________________________________________

The new far-right wing ECONOMIC catch phrase after SUPPLY SIDE TRICKLE DOWN REAGAN neo-liberalism------is now robotics increasing productivity-----but not harming US 99% employment for 50% of Americans----no, make that 30% of Americans ---no, make that 20% of white men-----no, let's make women think they will be WINNERS----no, wait the goal of global banking 1% is

DESIGNER MANUFACTURING PRODUCING PRODUCTS PRICED HIGH TARGETING ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% WITH FACTORY AND SERVICE BEING AS MUCH ROBOTIC AND AI----AS POSSIBLE.

So, while today's fanfare is the opening of what used to be our LOCAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS----now privatized and corporate to nothing but STEM and technology-----placing our US students on career paths we already know will not exist

IF WE KEEP MOVING FORWARD TO ONE WORLD ONE TECHNOLOGY AND ENERGY GRID.


Production Soared After This Factory Replaced 90% of Its Employees With Robots
Industriemuseum Chemnitz
by June Javelosa and Kristin Houser February 9, 2017 Future Society

In Brief
  • After a Chinese factory replaced 90% of its human workforce with automated machines, it experienced a 250% increase in productivity and an 80% drop in defects.
  • As technology improves, the range of tasks that can be taken over by automated systems will continue to expand, leaving the future of human labor in a state of flux.

The Rise of the Robot Workforce


It’s hard to argue against automation when statistics are clearly illustrating its potential. The latest evidence comes out of a Chinese factory in Dongguan City. The factory recently replaced 90 percent of its human workforce with machines, and it led to a staggering 250 percent increase in productivity and a significant 80 percent drop in defects.



Changying Precision Technology Company’s factory used to need 650 human workers to produce mobile phones. Now, the factory is run by 60 robot arms that work around the clock across 10 production lines. Only 60 people are still employed by the company — three are assigned to check and monitor the production line, and the others are tasked with monitoring computer control systems. Any remaining work not handled by humans is left in the capable hands of machines.



According to Luo Weiqiang, general manager of the factory, the number of people employed could drop to just 20, and given the level of efficiency achieved by automation, it won’t be long before other factories follow in their footsteps.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Employee Displacement


This efficiency comes at a price, though: our jobs. In fact, according to a joint study conducted by Oxford University and the Oxford Martin School, “[…] 47 percent of jobs in the US are ‘at risk’ of being automated in the next 20 years.”



And these won’t just be factory jobs, either. At the rate that robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are advancing, machines will soon be able to take over tasks in a variety of industries and do them just as well as, if not better than, humans. This early into our inevitably automated future, we already have robot lawyers capable of defending parking ticket violations, an AI that can deliver a medical diagnosis as well as a human doctor, robot “journalists,” and even AI therapists that can outperform their human counterparts in terms of drawing out necessary personal information from patients.



The uncertainty surrounding the future of human employment in the age of automation is already apparent, and machines are poised to keep getting better and better at what they do. Fortunately, governments and private organizations are putting some serious thought into this subject and have come up with some potential solutions to address widespread employee displacement.


Among those is universal basic income (UBI),  a system in which all citizens of a country receive an unconditional amount of money on top of income they generate through other means. Pilot studies in countries like India, Canada, and Finland have already begun, and thus far, they’ve delivered promising results. It’s too early to say if UBI could address widespread job loss due to automation head on, but it could ultimately prove to be an empowering economic move as we make the transition.
______________________________________

The US 3 branches of government -----going, going, MOVING FORWARD to being gone.  As these articles state the LAWYERS making the biggest 5% freemason/Greek job category outside of REAL ESTATE will be fighting to be just another GIG startup having no future.  Accountants and lawyers are of course a MUST in civil society tied to RULE OF LAW------JUSTICE FOR ALL 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE.  

Please do not allow the FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS create more FAKE ECONOMIC phrases like TRICKLE DOWN.  There will be no job categories in any industry not reduced.  What level of corporate management will exist between global banking 1% and their BIG DEAD HEAD SUPER-DUPER COMPUTERS.

Well we are told---those robots must be REPAIRED.  Here in Baltimore our city buses are run until they fall apart often in several years because they get no MAINTENANCE.  Our street plants die agonizing deaths because there is no PLANT MAINTENANCE.  Global banking 1% eliminated that entire level of management these few decades---the goal will be eliminating even MORE.


'Browder’s online bot has helped overturn more than 200,000 parking tickets in these three cities, with a 60 percent success rate. He hopes to expand the service to San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles'.

What we are seeing across US with digitized credit card parking meters is the next BIG GLOBAL BANKING SCAM since the SPEED CAMERAS creating deliberate corruption in ordinary policing forcing our 99% WE THE PEOPLE into BOT COURT to shed corrupt TICKETS.

This is worse than PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS replacing our local CITY/STATE ATTORNEYS as PUBLIC DEFENDERS.





Have Parking Tickets? This Robot Lawyer Can Come to Your Rescue
Shutterstock
by Dom Galeon and Chelsea Gohd January 18, 2017 Artificial Intelligence

In Brief
  • Market research company Forrester estimates that by 2021 new technology will get rid of 6% of jobs
  • Joshua Browder spends a lot of time personally researching issues with confusing signage and parking rules


No More Need for Lawyers?

A new online service is becoming popular among people disputing parking tickets. We all respect the law, but parking tickets can be questionable.

This is where DoNotPay could help.





DoNotPay was originally made available in London and New York by Joshua Browder, a 20-year old Stanford University student from London who believes DoNotPay can help drivers with parking ticket disputes by leveling “the playing field so anyone can have the same legal access under the law,” Browder said.. Recently, he has expanded the service into Seattle. Browder’s online bot has helped overturn more than 200,000 parking tickets in these three cities, with a 60 percent success rate. He hopes to expand the service to San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles.




AI lawyers


This isn’t the first time an artificially intelligent (AI) system has dabbled in law. IBM Watson has an AI lawyer named Ross, and a recent study showed promise in an AI lawyer that reviewed human rights cases in Europe. While the effectiveness of these AI systems remains questionable, DoNotPay’s robot provides a unique paralegal service.

Seattle’s city officials think it could be useful. “Currently, we have four part-time field investigators to do the investigations for signs and curbs in the city of Los Angeles,” Wayne Garcia, parking operations chief for the city of Los Angeles, said.

So, DoNotPay will be a refuge for victims of confusing signages or for people who rush into no parking spots. This might seem like a small and insignificant development that will be used by just a few. But, if this system is successful, it could lead to the creation and adoption of similar programs. This could streamline and improve the efficiency of outdated processes like fighting parking tickets. This could save massive amounts of legal time and resources. But, will it be taking away jobs from humans?



It is possible that, as AI becomes integrated into new technology, jobs that were once done by people will become obsolete. With new technology, however, comes new jobs to develop and maintain new systems. It is difficult to predict, with accuracy, exactly how the adoption of AI technologies will affect job growth. However, while jobs might be threatened, there is the promise of new job creation.
______________________________________________

We took today simply to remind our US 99% of WE THE PEOPLE that what global banking 5% freemason/Greek CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA is MOVING FORWARD as our FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE ONE WORLD economy-----does have a goal of ending all job categories----does have a goal of ending 5% PLAYER PATRONAGE FAKE BUSINESSES -----and these 'PUBLIC SCHOOLS' being allowed to open as PUBLIC K-12 are NOT PUBLIC SCHOOLS---they are not even AMERICAN SCHOOLS.

Here we have a group of global banking 5% media players tied to RAGING GLOBAL NEO-LIBERAL----THE ECONOMIST pretending to discuss concerns that our 99% WE THE PEOPLE should have never mentioning the GORILLA-IN-THE-ROOM issue of simply STOPPING MOVING FORWARD and ENDING DESIGNATION OF FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES in all US cities.

We will look locally at how our PUBLIC K-12 is being rebuilt and how we will RE-PURPOSE these TECHNOLOGY SCHOOLS to serve all 99% of WE THE PEOPLE.


The world if robots take our jobs |

The Economist


The Economist

Published on Feb 15, 2017
Computers are taking on increasingly sophisticated tasks, a trend which will cost many people their jobs. With so much automation to come, how many humans will still be needed?

0 Comments

August 27th, 2018

8/27/2018

0 Comments

 
We will discuss what is fast becoming the only EDUCATION topic in town as ONE WORLD ONE TECHNOLOGY GRID MOVES FORWARD-----what we are seeing in our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones is FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL 1% CORPORATE FASCISM-----as part of rebuilding our US public K-12------and public universities. Remember, there is no US PUBLIC SCHOOLS----in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. The new schools opening whether elementary, middle, high school are installing global corporate NEO-LIBERAL WORLD BANK schools-----NOT public schools.

REAL left social progressives understand that after these few decades of ROBBER BARON FAILED STATES made of our US cities killing our public school systems----parents and students simply want PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN THEIR COMMUNITIES. What is being built will kill US public education---will kill broad economic opportunity and access for 99% of US and global citizens.

PLEASE DO NOT SETTLE FOR NEW BUILDINGS THINKING OUR CHILDREN ARE GETTING A PUBLIC SCHOOL.







Robots won't kill the workforce. They'll save the global ...
www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/...

Robots won't kill the ... who fear that the “rise of the robots” is rapidly making human workers obsolete, ... Subscribe to The Washington Post. Try 1 month for ...
Robots are killing jobs after all, apparently: One droid ...
www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/28/robots_are...

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Robots are killing jobs after all, ... according to a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic ... "one more robot per thousand workers reduces aggregate ...
Companies have monopoly power over workers’ wages. That’s ...
www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/6/17204808/wages...


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That’s killing the economy.

The trend can explain slow growth, ... as well as the replacement of workers with machinery, including robots (automation).

Why the robot apocalypse won’t kill all gig economy jobs ...
www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Why-the...

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To support those workers, ... Why the robot apocalypse won’t kill all gig economy jobs.

Facebook Twitter Email More. Messenger SMS LinkedIn Reddit Pinterest ...



Robots don’t kill workers, do they? | occasional links ...
anticap.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/robots-dont...

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Robots don’t kill workers, do ... president of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and ... it is neither employers nor robots that kill workers and ...
The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It’s Automation ...
www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term...

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Robot Revolution. The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not ...


Donald J. Trump told workers like Ms. Johnson that he would bring ... Even as the economy has ...




Killing the Gig Economy Myth, Are the Job-Killing Robots Next ...
cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/killing-the-gig...


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The new survey from BLS has hopefully killed most of the gig economy myths.

Maybe we can now look to kill the job-killing robot myth as well.



How robots will kill the 'gig economy' - CNBC
www.cnbc.com/2016/03/09/how-robots-will-kill-the...

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How robots will kill the 'gig economy ... such as lawyers and accountants — no longer guaranteed jobs at big firms — will be the new gig economy workers, ...


3 Ways Robots Affect the Economy | Investopedia
www.investopedia.com/articles/markets-economy/...

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3 Ways Robots Affect the Economy ... high-paying jobs that require skilled workers.


While it is true that robots are replacing low-skilled workers and ...

Automation Is Killing, Creating and Transforming Jobs - SHRM
www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent...

Automation Is Killing, Creating ... It will be particularly painful for workers

... the big-picture view is that technology will boost productivity and fuel the economy.

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Students at Southwest Legacy High School are welcomed by robots on their first day of school.




How robots will kill the 'gig economy'

Harriet Taylor | @Harri8t


Published 11:38 AM ET Wed, 9 March 2016 Updated 12:16 PM ET Wed, 9 March 2016 CNBC.com


The so-called gig economy will cease to exist in 20 years, according to a new report from venture-backed start-up Thumbtack, an online marketplace that helps skilled workers find customers.


The study predicts that logistics companies — from start-ups like Uber to tech giants like Amazon — will soon replace drivers and delivery workers with autonomous vehicles and drones. Highly skilled workers, such as lawyers and accountants — no longer guaranteed jobs at big firms — will be the new gig economy workers, the study finds.


"The gig economy as we know it will not last," Jon Lieber, chief economist at Thumbtack, and Lucas Puente, an economic analyst at the firm, said in the report. "In the past few years, analysts and reporters have obsessively focused on transportation technology platforms such as Uber and Lyft and delivery technology platforms such as Instacart and the workers needed for these on-demand services. This narrow focus on low-skilled 'gigs' misses a larger story. These relatively commoditized, undifferentiated services are supplementing income, not generating middle-class lifestyles. Moreover, these tasks are overwhelmingly likely to be automated over time, performed by self-driving cars and drones."



Uber is upfront about its plans to replace drivers with robots over time. "Autonomous driving technology has the potential to drastically reduce deaths in cars and make transportation even more affordable," an Uber spokesperson told CNBC. "That's an exciting future and one Uber intends to be part of, but that transition for technical, regulatory and adoption reasons, at scale, will take some time."




"In the meantime, our focus is providing flexible work opportunities for as many people in the world as possible," said the spokesperson.




Almost half of U.S. jobs are at high risk of computerization over the next 20 years, according to Oxford academics Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne. Their findings were published in 2013 and remain unchanged, though there are some caveats — such as resistance from stakeholders and relative wage levels — that will determine if a job is in fact automated, said Osborne.

We keep seeing this stat-----50% of US jobs will be robotics-----when in fact that percentage is far-larger.




Predictions about how many jobs robots will ultimately displace vary widely.
"We forecast that 16 percent of jobs will disappear due to automation technologies between now and 2025, but that jobs equivalent to 9 percent of today's jobs will be created," said Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder in a report. "Physical robots require repair and maintenance professionals — one of several job categories that will grow up around a more automated world."



Taking a global view, more than 3 million workers will be supervised by a "robo-boss" by 2018, research and advisory firm Gartner predicted late last year.

The jobs least likely to be automated first are those that require a high level of creativity or emotional intelligence, Osborne said. For example, school teacher jobs are relatively safe because of the elevated level of social intelligence required to teach and mentor children.

OH, REALLY?????




Positions that are particularly vulnerable to automation include telemarketers, tax preparers, watch repairers, insurance underwriters, cargo and freight agents, and mathematical technicians, the Oxford study found. Within each category, some jobs will be automated sooner.



"There are a lot of driving tasks today that really only require the navigation of relatively structured environments," said Osborne, co-director of the Oxford Martin Program on Technology and Employment. "In those types of environments, autonomous vehicles are very much on the near horizon."



Driving jobs on mining sites are already being automated and long-distance truck drivers, forklift operators and agricultural drivers could be replaced within five to 10 years, he said.




Professional drivers navigating complex inner-city environments, tricky intersections and pedestrians crossing roads involve all the higher-end difficulties of driving. That's why Uber drivers will be the last to be replaced by robots, perhaps within a couple of decades, said Osborne.



In the meantime, the gig economy is creating invaluable data to feed Uber's algorithms and build artificial intelligence systems — the brains of those robots. For example, an Uber driver is sending back a lot of data on where customers are as well as traffic and road conditions.


"All these things might ultimately enable the autonomous vehicles that Uber is very actively pursuing to better complete those kinds of tasks," said Osborne.



"This gig economy — in that it is being pursued through digital platforms — is actually getting people to automate themselves out of a job through delivering data back to the platforms that can be used to provide an automated alternative," he said.
___________________________________________

If our FB FRIENDS whether US citizens or global citizens do not KNOW the REAL INFORMATION we have posted every week for a dozen years -----if a citizen does not understand how these few decades our US media has been allowed to be completely myth-making and propaganda-----that is because the K-university schools in your communities were not US PUBLIC SCHOOLS----they were CORPORATE and FREEMASON--HIDING AND LYING information.

'Ruchir Sharma Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management,


is the author of “The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the The Post-Crisis World,” from which this essay is adapted'.


Here in US we will see those national media, global banking NGOs, and global technology think tanks telling us---DON'T WORRY-----we are creating new industries for employment---not killing all employment opportunity. Well, above we see MORGAN STANLEY INVESTMENT doing just that----in a WASHINGTON POST now owned by AMAZON BEZOS.

Now, if the US these few decades was not captured by ROBBER BARON CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----Morgan Stanley would be out of business and all its executives in PRISON. So, we would not turn to JAIL BAIT-----for what is good for American education and economic structure.


When we recover the massive corporate fraud from these few decades from MORGAN-----and GOLDMAN SACHS----we can have an FDR rebuilding of all the public K-universities we need in each state and community.




PostEverything

Robots won't kill the workforce. They'll save the global economy.


Across the world, the labor pool isn't growing fast enough to support our needs.

A robot collects dishes to be cleaned at Chilli Padi Nonya Cafe in Singapore.


(REUTERS/Edgar Su)

By Ruchir Sharma
, Contributor, Post


Everything


December 2, 2016




The United Nations forecasts that the global population will rise from 7.3 billion to nearly 10 billion by 2050, a big number that often prompts warnings about overpopulation. Some have come from neo-Malthusians, who fear that population growth will outstrip the food supply, leaving a hungry planet. Others appear in the tirades of anti-immigrant populists, invoking the specter of a rising tide of humanity as cause to slam borders shut. Still others inspire a chorus of neo-Luddites, who fear that the “rise of the robots” is rapidly making human workers obsolete, a threat all the more alarming if the human population is exploding.




Before long, though, we’re more likely to treasure robots than to revile them. They may be the one thing that can protect the global economy from the dangers that lie ahead.



An increase of 2.5 billion people may sound catastrophic. But what matters for economic growth is not the number of people but the rate of population growth. Since its peak in the 1960s, that rate has slumped by almost half to just 1 percent, and the U.N. forecast assumes that this slowdown will continue. Women are having fewer children, so fewer people are entering the working ages between 15 and 64, and labor-force growth is poised to decline from Chile to China. At the same time, owing to rapid advances in health care and medicine, people are living longer , and most of the coming global population increase will be among the retirement crowd. These trends are toxic for economic growth, and boosting the number of robots may be the easiest answer for many countries.





One simple way to estimate how fast an economy can grow is by adding working-age population growth and productivity growth: If the number of workers and output per worker are both increasing by 1 percent a year, then economic output should rise by roughly 2 percent. Over the past decade, both sides of that equation have declined dramatically across the world. In the United States, productivity growth has fallen by almost half from its postwar average, but growth in the labor force has slid even faster, dropping by two-thirds to an average pace of 0.5 percent, according to calculations performed for my book. Though many explanations have been offered for the slow recovery from the global financial crisis of 2008, the clearest answer may be aging populations. Something will have to fill the void left by, say, retiring farmers, and particularly at a time of rising hostility to immigrants, it is likely to be farmbots.

WE KNOW THESE STAGNANT US ECONOMIES ARE DELIBERATELY CAUSED BY US FED AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH AGING BABY BOOMERS.




It may not be long before economists are worrying about a global shortage of robots. In many industrial countries, from Germany to Japan to South Korea, growth in the working-age population has already peaked, acting as a drag on the economy. Widely overlooked, however, is the fact that the population-growth slowdown is unfolding even faster in the emerging world, according to my research.



Consider the turning point that China hit last year. For the first time since records began in the 1950s, its working-age population growth was negative. As a result, China’s labor force is expected to lose 1 million workers each year for the foreseeable future, and it is also aging rapidly. Studies by Evercore ISI, a research firm, show that the elderly share of the population is rising more than twice as fast as it did in the United States and more than four times faster than in France at similar stages of development. Asked by an alarmed dinner companion about the threat robots posed to jobs in China, Nobel economist Daniel Kahneman responded: “You just don’t get it. In China, the robots are going to come just in time.” No wonder Beijing now offers heavy subsidies to companies involved in industrial automation.

CHINA HAS TWO BILLION CITIZENS LEFT UNEMPLOYED THESE FEW DECADES OF FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----THERE ARE PLENTY OF PEOPLE FOR WORK IN CHINA FOR GOODNESS SAKE----


And timing is critical. Those who fear the job-destroying impact of machines say this generation of technology is different because it is coming so fast. If older generations created tools for use by humans, such as sewing machines, the new forms of automation are imbued with artificial intelligence, capable of “machine learning” and of rapidly replacing humans in a broad swath of jobs, from manufacturing to services — even jobs that involve writing about robots. Concern about this disruptive advance has been stirred up by authorities such as Oxford University researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, who predicted in 2013 that nearly half of U.S. jobs would be at risk from automation in the next decade or two.



These alarms have sounded before, however. The Machine Intelligence Research Institute at the University of California at Berkeley has found that today, the average forecast for when artificial intelligence will arrive is about 20 years. But that was also the standard prediction in 1955. And often, humans find a way of working with their automated creations. After the introduction of supermarket scanners, the number of cashiers grew. Though legal-discovery software appeared to threaten the jobs of paralegals, their ranks increased, too. Now, many fear that self-driving trucks will displace millions of American truckers, but they may create more and better jobs for those who service those increasingly complex vehicles.



If automation was displacing human workers as fast as implied in recent books like Martin Ford’s “The Rise of the Robots,” then we should be seeing a negative impact on jobs already. We’re not. Since 2008, economic growth has been weak compared with that in other post-crisis recoveries, but job growth in the major industrial countries has been relatively strong. In the Group of Seven, the world’s top industrial countries, unemployment has fallen faster than expected in the face of weak economic growth, and faster than in any comparable period since at least the 1970s. The Japanese economy is growing at 0.8 percent, yet it is at full employment. According to my research, the job picture has been particularly strong in Germany, Japan and South Korea — the industrial countries that employ the most robots .

ABSOLUTELY NOBODY BELIEVES TODAY'S US EMPLOYMENT/UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES----OF COURSE IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING.




True, robots do represent a new obstacle for some poorer nations, namely those few that do not suffer from population decline. In the postwar era, countries like China escaped poverty by moving a rising young population off the farm and into more productive jobs in factories. Indeed, it was unusual for any country to sustain rapid growth unless the working-age population was increasing faster than 2 percent a year. My analysis shows that, in the 1980s, 17 of the 20 largest emerging economies had a working-age population expanding that fast, according to my research, but now there are only two: Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. And they will have a hard time moving a large segment of their young populations into industrial jobs, given that they now have to compete with robotic manufacturing elsewhere.


Yet for the rising number of countries facing population decline, the effort to lift the labor force has begun. Starting in the 1980s, led by Singapore, nations from Chile to Australia have offered baby bonuses for women to have more children, but many have found that these bonuses are ineffective in the face of stronger cultural forces, including the desire of many women to pursue a career before having children. Others have tried with some success to boost the workforce directly by raising the retirement age, offering women incentives to join or return to the labor force after having kids, and opening doors to immigrant workers.



The simple math, however, shows that particularly in rapidly aging, conservative societies such as Japan and Germany, none of these groups has the potential to make up for coming declines in the working-age population. Germany decided to admit roughly 1 million refugees in 2015, in part for economic reasons, but the resulting controversy has reduced the flow. Germany would have to admit 1.5 million each year through 2030 to fully offset the economic impact of its aging population. Japan, which on average admits fewer than 70,000 immigrants per year, would have to admit 1 million annually. Given the widespread political backlash against immigration, increases this large are unlikely.




So far, robots are drawing comparatively little populist fire, perhaps in part because their numbers are still quite low. Worldwide, the industrial labor force includes about 320 million humans, compared with just 1.6 million robots. That’s a huge gap, even counting the superior strength and speed of the robots. And most of them fall in the category of unintelligent machines, committed to a single task such as turning a bolt or painting a car door. Nearly half of them work in the auto industry, which is still the largest employer (of humans) in the United States.



In the future, economists may start counting robots the way they now count gains in the working-age population, as a driver of growth. For much of the world, robots will stand alongside immigrants, women and the elderly as a fourth pool of labor.

DID ANYONE MISS THE INCLUSION OF MEN ------alongside immigrants, women, and elderly------our 99% of US men better know they are great big losers MOVING FORWARD no matter what those global banking 5% freemason/Greek labor players are selling.




Whether by design or accident, many of the countries with the most rapidly aging populations already have the most robots. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the nations with the highest density of industrial robots include South Korea, with 531 per 10,000 employees, Japan with 305 and Germany with 301. The United States ranks eighth with 176. China is well behind with only 49, but on the bright side — arguably — it had the world’s fastest-growing robot population.



Today, population trends are the most powerful force shaping the rise and fall of nations, the starting point of any discussion about an economy’s prospects. Most of the world is graying fast, and the economic answer to aging will be all hands on deck, no matter what they’re made of.

_____________________________________________


Those US cities having an ACLU not only backing, but leading in the building of what global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS ONE WORLD call '21st century schools'----you have an ACLU working for the civil liberties of extreme wealth and extreme corporate power----that's FAR-RIGHT WING LIBERTARIAN--------you do not have an ACLU working for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE both US and new immigrants-----claiming they are 'LEFT' and helping bring social benefit.

Here is Baltimore 'Public' Schools having literally raided for these few decades ALL public funding to our city K-12 so each community school was allowed to decay and struggling. All that public school funding was misappropriated to build global for-profit schools overseas---we are watching as a Baltimore City Center which is fast being made ONE MASSIVE GLOBAL HOPKINS CORPORATION CAMPUS----funneling all school building funds to those schools only.

LIVE WHERE YOU WORK MEANS ONLY HOPKINS EMPLOYEES WILL BE ATTENDING THESE SCHOOLS----THESE SCHOOLS HYPER-GLOBAL NEO-LIBERAL BRINGING NO VALUE TO OUR 99% PARENTS OR STUDENTS.


Everyone in this Baltimore Sun article quoted as supporting these schools and thinking it is great for our 99% of Baltimore citizens black, white, and brown citizens ---is a global banking 5% freemason/Greek player.  What started under Baltimore Mayor Rawlings-Blake with then Maryland Gov Democratic O'Malley is simply MOVING FORWARD same ONE WORLD US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE education policies under today's Baltimore Mayor PUGH and Maryland REPUBLICAN GOV HOGAN.   This is because both O'MALLEY AND HOGAN are FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING 1% ----not US Democrat or Republican.


Education



First of many new city schools opens in East Baltimore under $1.1B push


With gratitude, cheers, dancing and hope for the future, the new Fort Worthington Elementary and Middle School opened Wednesday, the first in an ambitious $1.1 billion school construction program in Baltimore that will upgrade and rebuild up to 28 schools.



The Fort Worthington project cost a total of $37 million and Mayor Catherine Pugh joined Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young and City Schools CEO Sonja Santelesis among other elected officials and advocates to cut a red ribbon to open it.



"They will come here and they will excel," Pugh said, as her voice grew louder like she was delivering a sermon in church. "This could be where the next president, the next cure for cancer could come from. We can do it, just give us the opportunity. That's what this school represents."


A second school in the state's 21st Century Schools program, Frederick Elementary School for grades pre-K through 5, is set for its ribbon cutting on Saturday at 2501 Frederick Ave. at noon. The school received a $30 million renovation and addition and will reopen merged with Samuel F.B. Morse Elementary School with a new principal, Harold S. Henry Jr.



Baltimore City Public School classes are set to begin on Sept. 5.



Ke'Maya Hopson, 9, a rising fourth grader at Fort Worthington was excited as she walked through the hallways of the new school at 2710 E. Hoffman St.
"The technology here will help me learn and the lunchroom is better," Hopson said.



"It's bigger and has a lot of glass," she added, pointing up toward a two-story atrium in the main lobby just off of the "cafetorium" where lunch and academic gatherings will be held in the very near future.

Gov. Larry Hogan helped to break ground at Fort Worthington last June 14 in a ceremony not attended by the city's former mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who was feuding with the governor at the time. The 21st Century Schools program was approved by the General Assembly in 2013 and officially kicked off in 2014.



The brick and glass school is a boost for the community of Berea, located a dozen blocks from Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore. The school is surrounded by working class rowhouses, but a few blocks away, there are dozens of vacant and abandoned houses. It is hoped to be a new anchor in the community, Santelesis said.



The Maryland Stadium Authority is overseeing the construction and designs of the 21st Century Schools program. Last year, MSA officials said they had realized $15 million in savings over original cost estimates as work at Fort Worthington and Frederick Elementary got underway. Two other schools are expected to deliver under the program by the end of the year.


There are a total of eight schools underway in the 21st Century project now and design and bidding work for two others is moving forward. Those schools are Arlington Elementary and Middle School and Patterson High School.



MSA officials have said a total of 17 city schools will be in the pipeline for the project by the end of the year.
_______________________________________

'In January 1857, Freemason James Buchanan was elected president to replace Franklin Pierce'.

Above we see global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS BUCHANAN as a minor US President-----this book brings modern day BUCHANAN as those with THE LONG GAME.

The fundamental duty of US public schools is to educate our US people to be CITIZENS and COMMUNITY LEADERS.  The article below claims the FAR-RIGHT WING RADICALS have WON--------calling the book DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS----non-fiction.  DEMOCRACY is in chains when all political parties are captured by global banking 5% freemason/Greek pols and players working for a FOREIGN SOVEREIGNTY OF MALTA---OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS.  DEMOCRACY is in chains when all national media is captured to myth-making and propaganda-----which was allowed to taken place over just a few decades CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA because our US public K-university schools were captured and corporatized.

DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS tries to tell us that a nation with broad political input from communities and states having 99% of citizens wanting to create societal conditions allowing for REAL multiculturalism-----placed US DEMOCRACY in chains.  What we are MOVING FORWARD with ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1%-----is 1000BC Democracy where only the GLOBAL 1% have rights as CITIZENS.

WHEN WE DISCUSS PUBLIC EDUCATION POLICY IN US TODAY----IF OUR US K-UNIVERSITY HAS NOT MADE THE CORRUPTION OF ALL OUR POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES TOP IN EDUCATIONAL CURRICULA----WE HAVE 'FAILED SCHOOLS'.



We discuss in detail the goals and agenda put in place late 1800s ----early 1900s in taking America from being a sovereign nation to being a colonial nation by global banking 1% and OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS----all these goals were known to our US citizens who educated on public policy and economics these several decades. NO DOUBT what is being called a RADICAL FAR -RIGHT did corrupt our US politics for a LONG GAME-----but these REVISIONIST HISTORY 'non-fiction' books do not tell the REAL STORY.


Nonfiction
How the Radical Right Played the Long Game and Won


James McGill Buchanan, shortly after the announcement that he won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics.

By Heather Boushey
  • Aug. 15, 2017



DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS
The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America


By Nancy MacLean
334 pp. Viking. $28.




Earlier this year, when the Republican pollster Glen Bolger sat down with Donald Trump voters who had previously voted for Barack Obama, one Wisconsinite summed up his reason for favoring Trump this time around: “I think they all lie, but Trump was more — is more obvious.” This statement presents quite a puzzle. Why would any voter think that being a known liar is an asset?




Insight into this conundrum comes from an unlikely source, the life’s work of the economist James McGill Buchanan — who happens to be the subject of a new book, “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” by the historian Nancy MacLean. Buchanan, who was born in 1919 and died in 2013, advanced the field of public choice economics into politics, arguing that all interest groups push for their own agenda rather than the public good. According to this view, governing institutions cannot be trusted, which is why governing should be left to the market.


In the United States, promising and then delivering services and protections for the majority of voters provides a path for politicians to be popularly elected. Buchanan was concerned that this would lead to overinvestment in public services, as the majority would be all too willing to tax the wealthy minority to support these programs. So Buchanan came to a radical conclusion: Majority rule was an economic problem. “Despotism,” he declared in his 1975 book “The Limits of Liberty,” “may be the only organizational alternative to the political structure that we observe.”



Buchanan therefore argued for “curbing the appetites of majority coalitions” by establishing ironclad rules that would curb their power. As he was known for saying, “the problems of our times require attention to the rules rather than the rulers.” In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for “his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision making.”




Buchanan, however, also had what MacLean calls a “stealth” agenda. He knew that the majority would never agree to being constrained. He therefore helped lead a push to undermine their trust in public institutions. The idea was to get voters to direct their ire at these institutions and divert their attention away from increasing income and wealth inequality.


This is the sordid tale that MacLean lays out in “Democracy in Chains.” She starts with Buchanan’s early engagement in policy work in the late 1950s, when he offered to help the state of Virginia respond to the federal mandate to desegregate public schools. After the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that public school segregation was unconstitutional, Buchanan and a fellow economist called for the state to issue tax-subsidized vouchers to any parents who wanted to send their children to private schools. What these economists were calling for was essentially the privatization of public education.




But even in 1950s Virginia, public schools were popular with many white parents, and “a fire sale of tax-funded public schools to private school operators would be political suicide,” MacLean writes. Buchanan’s plan failed, and he learned a tough lesson from this foray into policy making: If the majority demands services such as free public schools, politicians will acquiesce.

Buchanan decided he needed to influence policy at a deeper level. In the ensuing years, he sought to lead an economic and political movement in which he stressed that “conspiratorial secrecy is at all times essential” to mask efforts to protect the wealthy elite from the will of the majority. In September 1973, Buchanan held the inaugural meeting of the International Atlantic Economic Society, arguing for the need to “create, support and activate an effective counterintelligentsia” to reshape the way people thought about government. He believed the center-left controlled academia and “effectively indoctrinated political actors in both parties,” MacLean writes. To fight back, conservatives needed to develop new surrogates who could be “indoctrinated” in turn with right-wing ideas, and then “mobilized, organized and directed” to disseminate them.


We know all of this because MacLean found documentation of Buchanan’s plans — including correspondence, meeting minutes and personal papers — in his previously unexplored archives. She came upon her biographical subject “by sheer serendipity,” she writes, while researching how the state of Virginia responded to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Seeing the name of an unfamiliar economist eventually led her to rooms full of documents that made clear how “operatives” had been trained “to staff the far-flung and purportedly separate, yet intricately connected, institutions funded by the Koch brothers and their now large network of fellow wealthy donors.” Buchanan’s papers revealed how, from a series of faculty perches at several universities, he spent his life laying out a game plan for a right-wing social movement.




One part of his plan involved Social Security. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 was a watershed for conservatives, yet it quickly became clear that he, too, would succumb to political pressure. By 1982, Reagan’s fight to end Social Security — long a bugbear of Buchanan’s — was faltering. Amid that debate, the libertarian Cato Institute, funded by the brothers Charles and David Koch, made privatization of Social Security its top priority and turned to Buchanan for a master plan. Buchanan told them that “those who seek to undermine the existing structure” must do two things: Make people doubt the viability of Social Security, and divide the public by suggesting high earners be taxed at higher rates — which might sound progressive but would ultimately undo the universal foundation of the program itself.

REAGAN WAS NEVER RIGHT WING CONSERVATIVE---HE WAS ALWAYS FAR-RIGHT WING NEO-LIBERAL WHICH IS BASICALLY LIBERTARIAN-----AS WAS CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA---now TRUMP.


MacLean doesn’t hide her antipathy to Buchanan’s goals. As a historian of American social movements, she brings this expertise to her study of Buchanan, showing how his work helped to sow doubt that anyone — whether individuals, groups or institutions — can act in the public good. Nevertheless, her overt moral revulsion at her subject can sometimes make it seem as if we’re getting only part of the picture.



American democracy was unprepared to defend itself against the agenda of Buchanan and conservative benefactors. Buchanan may not have been the only actor in this movement, and the role of conservative donors and economists has been documented elsewhere, but we are now living in a world he helped shepherd into reality. Public choice economists argue that those with the most to lose from change will pay the most attention, which has certainly been the case with Charles and David Koch. They and their friends have invested enormous sums in organizations that have changed the national debate about the proper role of government in the economy. Our politically polarized and increasingly paralyzed government institutions are the result.



With this book MacLean joins a growing chorus of scholars and journalists documenting the systematic, organized effort to undermine democracy and change the rules. In “Dark Money,” Jane Mayer tells the tale of the Koch brothers. In “Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal,” the historian Kim Phillips-Fein shows how a small group of businessmen initiated a decades-long effort to build popular support for free market economics. The political scientist Steven M. Teles writes about the chemicals magnate John M. Olin in “The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement.”



Power consolidation sometimes seems like a perpetual motion machine, continually widening the gap between those who have power and money and those who don’t. Still, “Democracy in Chains” leaves me with hope: Perhaps as books like MacLean’s continue to shine a light on important truths, Americans will begin to realize they need to pay more attention and not succumb to the cynical view that known liars make the best leaders.


__________________________



Here is just ONE example of MYTH-MAKING AND PROPAGANDA in Baltimore as global banking 5% sell the idea that GLOBAL GREEN TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION ------is GREEN-----is SUSTAINABLE-----is good for our 99% WE THE PEOPLE-----economic future.



We often discuss how the PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD------is FAKE ENVIRONMENTALISM----it is tied to FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL CORPORATIONS having pretended to be advancing social benefit---as with global big AG and big MEAT-----as with GLOBAL ONE WORLD ONE TECHNOLOGY AND ENERGY GRID.



The reason OBAMA sent to PARIS CLIMATE ACCORD our former Baltimore MAYOR RAWLINGS-BLAKE -----is BALTIMORE could care less about climate change----could care less about being GREEN or ENVIRONMENTAL-----Baltimore is FAR-RIGHT WING BUSH/CHENEY-----nothing happening in Baltimore tied to environmentalism.



THIS IS SMART CITIES DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE-----being sold as CLEAN ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

When our Baltimore Public K-university allow all this myth-making and propaganda surrounding in this case---ENVIRONMENTALISM/WHAT REALLY IS GREEN-----we have no PUBLIC SCHOOLS.


THIS is how the FAR-RIGHT WING played the long-game in KILLING US DEMOCRACY-----it is these far-right wing ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT 5% freemason/Greek player NGOs pretending to be 'left' social benefit that killed DEMOCRACY in America.  It is our US public K-university where all broad open discussion of public policy occurs-----




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Take a stand for a safe climate, clean air, and healthy communities in Baltimore. Meet us on April 29th at 4th St NW & Madison Drive on the National Mall.

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Join the Baltimore Peoples Climate Movement for our second town hall focused on building the New Energy & Economic Future!

Doors at 5:30 - Conversation at 6!

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The very first goal of any US public school system would be to assure the American people the most BASIC and FUNDAMENTAL definitions of what is PROPAGANDA---MYTH-MAKING-----vs what is REAL INFORMATION---NON-FICTION.

There is no doubt that a pluralist society is filled with people thinking what THEY believe is REAL INFORMATION.  BIAS/OPINION comes with POLITICS.  But there is a core of information that we KNOW to be a BASELINE for real information.  Here in US we have KNOWN that national media and global NGOs were corrupting the definitions of political philosophy---of what goals politicians have with MOVING FORWARD a political agenda.

IT REALLY IS EASY PEASY FOR ANY PUBLIC K-UNIVERSITY TO ACT AS A CENTER FOR REAL INFORMATION.



Defining Propaganda


prop·a·gan·da

[prop-uh-gan-duh]
noun


1.  information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.


2.  the deliberate spreading of such information, rumors, etc.


3.  the particular doctrines or principles propagated by an organization or movement.


 
What is Propaganda?



        As opposed to information that is objectively presented to inform a audience, propaganda is constructed with the intent to influence the attitudes, beliefs, or opinions of a target audience.  Richard Alan Nelson defines propaganda as such: “Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels” [1].


  Propaganda is considered to be by popular opinion a wholly negative term, loosely considered to be a synonym for blatant lying and manipulative coercion.  Settling on a universally agreed upon definition of propaganda has not been achieved ever since its coinage.  Indeed, “The experts have plenty of trouble in agreeing upon a satisfactory definition of propaganda, but they are agreed that the term can’t be limited to the type of propaganda that seeks to achieve bad ends or to the form that makes use of deceitful methods” [2].



  Various individuals and groups have attempted to pin down propaganda in one way or another.  Some say that propaganda must have emotional appeal, but many things which most would consider propaganda are based purely in logic (just, perhaps, false logic).  Some people assert that propaganda is present only in periods of controversial situations, but this is not the whole case because we widely regard things such as STD awareness as propaganda.  Robert B. Townsend closes his examination of what propaganda is with the following remark: “Most students of the subject agree that propaganda has to do with any ideas and beliefs that are intentionally propagated. They agree also that it attempts to reach a goal by making use of words and word substitutes.  Types of propaganda range from the selfish, deceitful, and subversive to the honest and aboveboard promotional effort. It can be concealed or open, emotional or containing appeals to reason, or a combination of emotional and logical appeals” [2].



       The definition used for purposes here is:  “Propaganda is information that deliberately attempts to persuade the attitudes, beliefs, or opinions of a target audience for ideological or political reasons”.



Types of Propaganda  



      There is a way in which propaganda is classified that is popular in propaganda studies, this is the black-white-gray classification. This classification system focuses primarily on the originator of the propaganda in question and its terms are as follows:



White Propaganda:  Propaganda which truthfully states its origin (the source is outright identified). The information presented is accurate (even if one sided, etc.). It is the most common type of propaganda.




Gray Propaganda:  Propaganda whose source may or may not be correctly identified.  Accuracy of information is uncertain.  “The objective of gray propaganda is to advance viewpoints that are in the interest of the originator but that would be more acceptable to target audiences than official statements. The reasoning is that avowedly propagandistic materials from a foreign government or identified propaganda agency might convince few, but the same ideas presented by seemingly neutral outlets would be more persuasive” [3].



Black Propaganda:
  Black propaganda, like gray, camouflages the true source of the propaganda. But while gray propaganda is unattributed, black propaganda is typically falsely attributed. “Black propaganda is highly subversive and provocative; it is usually designed to appear to have originated from a hostile source, in order to cause that source embarrassment, to damage its prestige, to undermine its credibility, or to get it to take actions that it might not otherwise” [3].



      This classification of propaganda is not universally agreed upon and is not useful for our purposes here. These forms, in any significant sense, only account for the origination source of the propaganda and for the most part over look methods and intent of the source.  These three forms of propaganda will be considered only so far as the originating source of the propaganda will be considered in light of the following categories.





Soft Propaganda: 
  • Most closely resembles “white propaganda”
  • Source is known
  •  Information presented is largely accurate and truthful
  • Seeks informed support from target audience
  • Goal is to further the goals of the propagandist but not without regard to the well-being of the audience

Hard Propaganda:
  • Most closely resembles “black propaganda”
  • Source may be unclear or unknown
  • Information presented is largely inaccurate, false or deceitful [4]
  • Seeks to coerce its audience, rather that truthfully inform
  • Goal is to further the goals of the propagandist, with no concern for well-being of the audience
  • In general it does the following: calls on false authority, lies, fabricates, exaggerates, deceives, coerces, or disinforms.
___________________________________________

Gov Rauner of Illinois is a FAR-RIGHT WING global Clinton neo-liberal NOT A DEMOCRAT-------he made the STATE OF ILLINOIS a SANCTUARY STATE meaning the entire state is now a US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE. So too did STATE OF MARYLAND under O'MALLEY another FAR-RIGHT WING Clinton neo-liberal allowed to be called a DEMOCRAT. Of course Rauner would veto set salaries of any kind especially those tied to US first world developed nation quality of life and LIVING WAGE. There will be NO US SCHOOL TEACHER PROFESSIONALS in ONE WORLD ONLINE COMMONER CORE----and certainly no employee wages not in line with overseas Asian Foreign Economic Zones----$40,000 salary?
HOW 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN.


Of course FAKE REPUBLICANS are MOVING FORWARD all these ONE WORLD neo-liberal education policies as well.


Rauner vetoes bill that would set minimum teacher salary at $40,000 within five years


Mike Riopell

Chicago Tribune




Gov. Bruce Rauner on Sunday vetoed legislation that would have raised the minimum salary for an Illinois teacher to $40,000 within five years, putting the re-election-seeking Republican at odds with teachers unions once again.



The bill approved by lawmakers in the spring would make the minimum teacher salary for next school year $32,076. The number would rise to $40,000 for the 2022-23 term and grow with the Consumer Price Index after that.

REMEMBER, IN US THE LIVING WAGE IS NOW $18 AN  HOUR----$30,000 A YEAR=====SO THESE 'MINIMUMS ARE POVERTY LINE.


“Teachers are our greatest asset in ensuring the future of our youth and they deserve to be well-compensated for their hard work,” Rauner wrote in his veto message. “However, minimum pay legislation is neither the most efficient nor the most effective way to compensate our teachers.




“Things like pay-for-performance, diversified pay for teachers in hard-to-staff schools or subjects, or pay incentives for teachers with prior work experience are all viable options to provide greater compensation for teachers,” the governor wrote.


The Democrat who sponsored the salary bill said Sunday that he was “disappointed.”



“Refusing to guarantee professional educators a livable minimum wage is no way to lure more teachers to Illinois,” Democratic state Sen. Andy Manar of Bunker Hill said in a statement. “I’m disappointed in the governor’s veto, and I know thousands of dedicated, hard-working, creative educators throughout the state are too.”

SOMEHOW SEN ANDY MANAR DOES NOT MENTION THE DESIGNATION OF FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES ASSURES THIRD WORLD WAGES AND NOT US PUBLIC EDUCATION.



Rauner has feuded with labor since his first campaign, including teachers unions that backed the minimum salary proposal. But he often touts his signature last year on a new school funding formula among his top achievements.

State lawmakers could try to override Rauner’s veto when they go back to Springfield after the November election, but it could be difficult. Supporters would have to find six more supporters of the minimum teacher salary bill than voted for it back in May.



Illinois law currently lists the minimum salary for a teacher at $9,000, a level that took effect in July 1980.

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August 24th, 2018

8/24/2018

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We will end this week's discussion of LANDLORD/TENANT public policy MOVING FORWARD the goals of none of our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE being able to be LANDLORDS and/or not able to be RENTERS anywhere we want to live.

As always we target our US 99% of young adults because they have not experienced our strong US first world, developed  nation enforcing US RULE OF LAW, providing oversight and accountability, having legal structures enforcing civil rights of citizens.  CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA global banking pols killed all that these few decades.

When we discuss the goals of filling our US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES with a few billion new immigrants forced to live and work in US zones as they do in third world nations-----these are the future citizens to US who will have absolutely no experience of an America as a first world, developed nation, with strong RULE OF LAW and citizens' rights.  They will be targeted by the global banking institutions in US cities today, fleeced of all their wealth ----as here in Baltimore with Baltimore Development Corporation, Greater Baltimore Committee, global hedge fund Johns Hopkins---and all those FAKE social progressive organizations PRETENDING to be working for our 99% as populist leaders.



We want to address NEW IMMIGRANT RIGHTS regarding buying and renting property.  The new global 1% foreign rich are protected by ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE for only the global 1% although we feel sure they will be fleeced by global banking 1% players tied to our US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.  These foreign rich either BUY duel citizenships or they bring dozens of corporate lawyers to try to secure property rights within these US zones---like Baltimore.

Things are much different for our global 99% of new immigrants---they have already these few decades been the target of fleecing over property sales----I.E victims of subprime mortgage loan frauds in great numbers.  Below we see a discussion by our US 99% over what they call 'illegal immigrants' and what they think property rights are for them.



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Thread: Can A Illegal Immigrant Own Property?

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  1. 06-19-2011, 08:58 PM #1
    busygirl

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    Can A Illegal Immigrant Own Property?
  2. I was wondering , can an illegal immigrant own property legally? I tried to find the basic federal laws against illegal immigration in google but couldn't find any.
  3. 06-19-2011, 09:19 PM #2
    Mayday

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    Yes. Around here many do a "rent to own" to buy property or they pay cash. At least that's the way it is in my town.
  4. 06-19-2011, 09:22 PM #3
    ReformUSA2012

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    There is no law against it currently however some states passing tough immigration laws are making similiar type of laws. The catch is though that the federal government and even states when allowed to enforce immigration law could turn the tables on that. Laws about "proceeds of a crime" can be used to take that house and virtually anything else but the mood hasn't been right of course in states and the federal government yet.
  5. 06-19-2011, 09:28 PM #4
    topsecret10

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    Normally one is required to provide a Social Security number and photo identification, usually a drivers license, and banking information. A contract to "buy and sell" is legal, but the contract is being made with a person who is committing a criminal act (illegal alien) and who does not possess the rights and privileges of citizenship.

    The Federal government does what they always do. They look the other way and let banks sell morgages to Illegals even though It Is against Federal law. This easily falls under the term "aiding and abetting" Illegals ...
  6. 06-19-2011, 09:58 PM #5
    pattyk

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    They probly use that famous T.I.N.
  7. 06-19-2011, 10:02 PM #6
    strugglingcitizen

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    Originally Posted by pattyk
    They probly use that famous T.I.N.
    T.I.N?
  8. 06-19-2011, 10:09 PM #7
    pattyk

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    Tax Identification number. They use it to file their tax returns cause they dont have social security numbers.
  9. 06-19-2011, 10:11 PM #8
    pattyk

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    They use it to open bank accounts too.
  10. 06-19-2011, 10:15 PM #9
    strugglingcitizen

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    Originally Posted by pattyk
    They use it to open bank accounts too.
    Thanks Patty, most dont even have that!!!! Our pandering former mayor ,funded a bank so illegals could get accounts without a ss so they wouldnt get robbed on pay days
  11. 06-19-2011, 10:16 PM #10
    Dixie

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    Makes you wonder how much US territory is owned by foreign nationals.

    Rent-to-own illegals usually don't end up with the property. I see a house get turned over again and again. They move in and do illegal remodeling and then leave, then someone inspects it when they try to rent-to-own again and the places gets boarded up. Then some sucker comes along that will do the repairs for the down and tries to bring it up to code but he can't live in it while he fixes it, then another sucker comes along, and another... Then they get it up to code and do a rent-to-own and they do illegal remodels and the whole mess starts over again. Illegal remodeling can really trash a house. Often, they catch on fire, the walls bow out, walls or roof cave in or just end up ugly eye soars because they've used salvaged construction materials or stuff they stole from a job site. It's a mess. Every time I hear about one of these deals, the owner always seems to be living in Mexico.
_____________________________________________

It always kills REAL left social progressives when our US 99% right wing focus like hawks on civil behaviors of those lower income 99% of new immigrants calling them ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS while those global 1% foreign rich have sacked and looted the US as partners with FOREIGN SOVEREIGNTY OF MALTA/TRIBES OF JUDAH.  So, global 1% foreign rich being allowed to buy and be partners to US city development deals are ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS---THEY COMMITTED CRIMES against the US as partners with CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.  Our US 99% must look UP the income ladder to FIX BALTIMORE.

The discussion above makes a few good points.  It describes how these few decades global banking 5% freemason/Greek players have allowed new immigrants to be CAPTURED in subprime mortgage loan frauds knowing these new immigrants would be losing those homes down the road.  As well, our 99% of new immigrants are being allowed to be captured in schemes like RENT TO OWN------while global banking players KNOW these immigrants are likely to be pushed out of these communities for one reason or another----losing that RENT TO OWN.


As we shouted at the beginning of TRUMP'S term in office------EVERY PRESIDENT since CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA starts the terms doing just what TRUMP did regarding immigrants told they were welcome-----then pushed out when they get close to naturalized citizenship----or when they get close to being actual homeowners.  These PRESIDENTIAL attacks on US immigrants are WELL-TARGETED. 

THIS IS WHEN YOU KNOW OUR US POLITICAL SYSTEM IS CAPTURED TO FAR-RIGHT WING----REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES DO NOT PEDDLE CRIMINAL HOUSING POLICIES.


NPR's MARKETPLACE MONEY knows this-----CASA de MARYLAND knows this------civil rights groups like NAACP knows this------this is how we know all these groups are global banking 5% freemason/Greek players PRETENDING to care about our 99% new immigrants while working to kill their futures.


What happens to your house when you get deported?
By Reema Khrais
August 10, 2017 | 1:20 PM




President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to ramp up immigration enforcement.


From February through June, an average of 13,085 undocumented immigrants were arrested each month, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That compares to an average of 9,134 arrests per month during the last three months of 2016.



The economic ripple effects of arrests – and eventual deportations – are wide-ranging. But one little noticed consequence is their effect on the housing market.


Research shows that deportations lead to higher rates of foreclosure among Latino communities. That’s because the loss of an income for families – especially if it is the breadwinner who is detained – can make it harder for remaining family members to make mortgage payments.


That reality is what spurred Maria, an undocumented immigrant who runs a Quinceañera shop in Los Angeles, to recently transfer the title of her house to her 22-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen.


“I refinanced it and took the money because if they come up and deport us, we have that money put away,” Maria said in Spanish. “It’s with my daughter.”
Maria, who didn’t want her last name used to protect her safety, has owned a home in California for more than 20 years. 



She and her husband scraped together $2,000 for the down payment and have since remodeled it over the years. The thought of losing the house because of a deportation, she said, is terrifying.
“Because everything we made, all that we built could fall apart at any moment,” she said.



Maria is among the 31 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who own a home, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Without social security numbers, many undocumented immigrants are able to take out loans by using their Taxpayer Identification Number.


The link between deportations and foreclosures is something Jacob Rugh, an assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, has studied extensively.



He found that deportations during the Great Recession, which reached record levels, exacerbated foreclosures among Latinos. Rugh, along with Matthew Hall of Cornell University, looked at data from 2005 to 2012, focusing on counties that collaborated with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the 287 (g) program. That’s the program that allows local law enforcement to help arrest and detain people suspected of violating immigration law.



They found that in 42 counties, foreclosure rates among Latino households were nearly 70 percent higher than in otherwise similar counties.


That’s because while many undocumented immigrants are homeowners, many live – and contribute income — to multi-generational households owned by Latinos who are here legally.



“Even in expensive markets, you could see that immigrants were pooling their resources across legal statuses, across families, to make the American dream possible,” Rugh explained.



Rugh said deportations act like other triggers for foreclosure that are well-known: “It’s as though someone was divorced or became ill,” he explained.



Most undocumented immigrants who are deported are Latino men with jobs. So, for families that hold the bulk of their wealth in a home, that loss of an income can mean losing money for college or medical bills.

“It has this sort of domino effect on the rest of the community and on the economy, frankly,” said Marisa Calderon, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

 

Calderon said a huge spike in deportations could have an impact on the housing market as Hispanics are expected to drive home demand over the next decade.
“People don’t come to this country dreaming to be renters, they want to be able to have a little place to call their own,” she said.


That’s what Claudia, who’s undocumented, wanted. Her parents brought her to Wichita, Kansas from Mexico when she was a young girl. That’s where she eventually fell in love with her boyfriend, got married and bought her first home.

“I wanted to have something more stable for my son. Like a lot of my friends, they still have their memories or like their pictures, and I didn’t have that,” she said.

Claudia was on her way to building that stability when, in 2005, her husband, who’s also undocumented, was detained. He lost his painting business. The court fees and bills started piling up.

“We were really trying to save the home,” she said.
But they couldn’t make the mortgage payments. They lost their home. Eventually Claudia’s husband was deported. He is now back in the U.S. and both Claudia and her husband are seeing political asylum.


But instead of the two-bedroom home with the big backyard, they’re renting in the same Wichita apartment complex they were in when they first got married.



“It was really hard for me last year when I turned 40,” she said. “It was like, I cannot believe I’ve been working hard my whole life, had dreams, and here I am at 40, starting all over again.”

She said she wonders where they’d be if they hadn’t lost their house.
__________________________________________

The problems our 99% of new to US immigrants have in REALLY securing property as homes or being LANDLORDS is tied with our immigrants being able to STAY EMPLOYED over the long term------and remaining SOVEREIGN to one city/county/state or staying in the US.

What are the laws of buying and selling land in US?  Well, most legal contracts require both parties involved not have CRIMINAL STATUS still active.  Those new immigrants not in US on VISAS OR GREEN CARDS will, no matter how much global banking 1% pols PRETEND to be SANCTUARY CITY/STATE pro-immigrant-----we see those open arms CLOSE TIGHT around your WEALTH.

The problem for our new immigrants here in US cities LEGALLY as green card holders or VISA holders is this:  global banking intends to end your legal immigrant status BEFORE you can OWN THE BUILDINGS or shortly AFTER you have bought them.  There is no intent of allowing global 99% of new immigrants NOT TIED TO BEING GLOBAL 1% -----to be home-owners or LANDLORDS.

Below we see TEXAS doing just this.  No state actively stages any person living inside its borders to be fleeced of their wealth than TEXAS ----BALTIMORE as a city is top gun as well.  So, these are 'ILLEGAL' immigrants being told it is OK to stay in TEXAS----it is OK to buy a house, to be LANDLORDS, all while global banking 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA intend to change laws---change this policy stance----and make sure these new immigrants lose all that home-equity.

THIS PROPERTY SCAM HAS OPERATED THESE FEW DECADES----MOVING FORWARD THE GOAL HAS THIS SAME SCAM TARGETING FOREIGN MIDDLE-CLASS PROFESSIONALS COMING TO US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES------ALL OF WHOM WILL LOSE THEIR WEALTH.

Where the target these few decades was the fleecing of working class immigrants----global banking 1% players are now focused on those foreign white collar professional immigrants ready to sack and loot them.



And it will be ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT FAKE civil rights groups telling these immigrants this is GOOD POLICY.


Illegal status no bar to immigrants buying homes
REAL ESTATE


Renters no more


More undocumented immigrants are able to buy homes




OLIVIA BLANCO MULLINS, Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle


Published 5:30 am CDT, Friday, August 4, 2006


Although they are undocumented immigrants, Mexican couple Jorge and Maribel were able to purchase their Houston home.
Despite being in the U.S. illegally, undocumented immigrants can legally buy a house.
Certain lenders don't ask for immigration papers. And buyers using a special tax ID often don't need a lengthy credit history.



That has allowed many undocumented workers to realize the American Dream, experts said, while contributing to an upturn in the real estate market.



For Jorge and Maribel, a couple from Mexico who have lived illegally in Houston since 1996, an Individual Tax Identification Number, known as an ITIN, and a Texas driver's license were enough to secure their mortgage, allowing them to purchase a home in 2002.


"I was really surprised when I found out that it could be done," said Jorge, who bought his home through Gloria Castrejón's realty firm, La Palma.


Like Maribel, Jorge asked to be identified by only his first name.
The fact is, it can be easier for many undocumented immigrants to buy houses than to get jobs.
To complete the purchase, they don't need a Social Security number.



An ITIN, their last two yearly tax returns, an official ID such as a consular registration card and a few credit references, such as electricity and telephone bills, are enough to apply for a mortgage and buy a home, according to experts.


"Residency has never been a condition to purchase a home," said Frances Martinez Myers, president of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, which is based in Washington, D.C.
"Being in the country legally or not is not an issue when you are buying a house."



If a buyer does provide a Social Security number, real estate agencies and lenders may request proof of legal status, according to Myers. But that is usually not the case with an ITIN.


"It is not illegal for an undocumented immigrant to buy a house. What is illegal is to do so using a false Social Security number," Houston immigration lawyer José Vega warned.


Although real estate deals involving non-U.S. residents have been going on for a while, Myers said that banks have only recently begun processing mortgages with ITIN numbers.


The Internal Revenue Service started issuing ITIN numbers in 1996 to enable people without Social Security numbers, including nonresident investors and illegal immigrants, to pay U.S. taxes, according to agency spokesperson Irma Trevino. The IRS has issued 9 million ITIN numbers.



Several real estate experts, including Wendy Buitron of the Texas Department of Banking, which oversees the state's financial system, confirmed that using an ITIN to obtain a mortgage is legal.


Real risks

For illegal immigrants, however, buying a home can carry risks.The biggest, said Houston real estate consultant Óscar González, of González Group, is deportation. If homeowners are forced to leave the country, they might be unable to afford payments and, therefore, could lose their home, Myers said.

We would suggest to our 99% of new immigrant citizens that the above GONZALES GROUP are 5% global banking players only interested in fleecing you through mortgage loan frauds.



Fraud is another risk. Paco Felici, spokesman for the Texas Attorney General's Office, said a Dallas operation that was selling homes to Hispanics without giving them property titles was busted in June.

We would suggest to our 99% of immigrants that a PACO FELICI as TX ATTORNEY being a global banking 5% player is killing our 99% of immigrants while pretending to care.



Another caveat for undocumented buyers: Financial institutions tend to charge illegal immigrants higher interest rates — sometimes several points higher — than other borrowers.


As for banks and lending institutions that grant ITIN loans, the risk is low, experts said. For example, Banco Popular limits ITIN loans to a maximum of $150,000, spokesman Juan Carlos Cruz said.


Banks approach such mortgages differently.
Banco Popular, which has been issuing ITIN mortgages since 1997, does not believe it is the bank's responsibility to determine the immigration status of a person, Cruz said.

BANCO POPULAR thinks just as all global banking -----whether targeting black, white, or brown citizens.  The problem is having banks which are not REALLY local, community banks.




Checking the papers


That view is not shared by Julie Davis , spokeswoman for Bank of America, who said it is her bank's policy to verify the immigration papers of a borrower when it processes ITIN mortgages."We do not loan money to people who are in the country illegally," said Davis, adding that customers can open a checking account with Bank of America by using a consular registration document as identification.


According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 48 percent of the more than 40 million Hispanics in this country were homeowners in 2002, the last year for which such figures are available.

CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA STOPPED FEDERAL OVERSIGHT DATA OPENING THE DOOR TO NOTHING BUT FAKE DATA----HERE WE SEE 2002.



Although some anti-immigration groups claim that those in the country illegally pose an economic burden, a study by the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals said that home purchases by undocumented workers could result in $60 billion in mortgages over the next few years.


The total value of mortgages granted for home purchases in 2005 was $1.5 trillion, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington, D.C.

Estimates on the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. vary.
The U.S. Census Bureau puts the figure at 11 million.
The Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, puts it at 12 million.


The Hispanic real estate group's study estimates more than 150,000 illegal immigrants who rent housing could afford a $98,000 home.



González is convinced that Hispanics, including illegal immigrants, are revitalizing the U.S. housing market.
"The real estate companies are focusing on the nontraditional buyers. Things are slowing down, and the focus has shifted to the Hispanic home buyer because of their numbers," he said.


Castrejón, Jorge and Maribel's agent, said one in five of her clients are undocumented immigrants. Castrejón said she sells 30 to 40 properties a year.
"This is much better than renting," Maribel said.
"We're not throwing our money away anymore."

______________________________________________


The public policies we discussed this week regarding LANDLORD/TENANT -----and how the goals of global banking to use these policies installed by a BALTIMORE CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT JACK YOUNG---et al of city council and MAYOR PUGH----are to fleece today's US middle-income and merely rich through real estate investments as well as push our renters into more PERSONAL DEBT with RENTER'S DEBT.

THIS GOES DOUBLY FOR OUR NEW TO US CITY IMMIGRANTS BOTH 99% IMMIGRANTS AND GLOBAL 1% AND THEIR 2% OF IMMIGRANTS.

It's true those global 1% and their 2% have the money for lawyers to fight these real estate frauds-----while our 99% of new immigrants will not.

So, what does all this next phase of complete criminality and corruption of our US city economics surrounding real estate and property rights mean to our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE?

The next phase of MOVING FORWARD seeks to remove all property ownership and rights from our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE while building global corporate campuses.  Today we are seeing only the global corporate FOOTPRINTS-----as we say UNDERARMOUR campus------AMAZON campus------JOHNS HOPKINS campus.  Until global banking 1% are ready to drop a global campus on our communities----they will keep our 99% property-owners caught in this cycle of BUYING AND BEING BUSTED.

Here we see what AUSTRALIA is doing to those global 1% and their 2% daring to invest in US real estate especially having been encouraged to be those US LANDLORDS.  Same will happen in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES MOVING FORWARD.

Any US citizen thinking scamming new immigrants will make our US 99% winners----not even our global banking 5% freemason/Greek players will be winners---they will be under the bus MOVING FORWARD.

Our US 5% freemason/Greek players have been these few decades those real estate players selling all this mortgage loan fraud----selling corrupt real estate planning-----but MOVING FORWARD will have our US 5% players in real estate OUT OF THE MARKET.



Foreign landlords imminent as Government waters down foreign home buyer ban
  • 19/06/2018

Tova O'Brien
Banning foreign home buyers was one of the major promises of Labour's election campaign, but the Government has now watered down its ban. Credits: Getty
Banning foreign home buyers was one of the major promises of Labour's election campaign, but the Government has now watered down its ban.
Now, foreigners can buy apartments or in some case buildings off the plans and keep them. Initially, they were going to have to sell them once they were built.
The move means foreign developers can build residential properties of 20 dwellings and rent them out, meaning there will now be the possibility for foreign landlords.
The ban doesn't apply to people from within Australia or Singapore.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says the move is a "smartening up of the foreign buyers legislation" - but National MP Gerry Brownlee says the Bill "now has so many carve-outs in it that some of its original purpose is almost lost".
Around March last year, 7.8 percent of homes in central Auckland were bought by foreign buyers. At the same time this year that had more than doubled to 18 percent.
But overall in New Zealand, foreign ownership isn't rising - steady at around just 3 percent.
Trade Minister David Parker says while key trading partners like China might try to copy Singapore and get an exemption for their citizens as well, they won't get one.
And New Zealand's about to enter into a free-trade deal with the EU and the UK.
The Government's back down does help mitigate criticism it's stymying investment, but the foreign buyers ban can't really be called a ban any longer.
Newshub.


_______________________________________________


Again, we pick on JOSH simply because he has been imported from Chicago to Baltimore to be the farm team global banking 5% freemason/Greek player trying to be pol.  JOSH as all GLOBAL GREEN CORPORATION PARTY candidates PRETEND to be 99% populist------they shout AFFORDABLE HOUSING AFFORDABLE HOUSING AFFORDABLE HOUSING all while pushing every global banking 1% FAKE housing policy having goals of KILLING 99% WE THE PEOPLE of Baltimore and our new to Baltimore immigrant citizens.

GLOBAL GREEN CORPORATION PARTY-----JUST AS 'OUR REVOLUTION' FOR ONLY THE GLOBAL 1% BERNIE SANDERS RUNNING AS DEMOCRATS ----ARE ALL ONE WORLD FAR-RIGHT WING, AUTHORITARIAN, MILITARISTIC, EXTREME WEALTH EXTREME POVERTY LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS.

When our US 99% allow FAR-RIGHT WING whether CLINTON/OBAMA-----now JILL STEIN/BERNIE SANDERS------be our POPULIST LEADERS----the only CIVIL RIGHTS these global banking 5% freemason/Greek players are working for---is the LIBERTARIAN civil right of the rich to accumulate wealth anyway they can----ergo, NO RULE OF LAW.....NO RIGHTS FOR CITIZENS.

My FB friend around the nation have these same global banking PLAYER CANDIDATES in all political parties pretending THEY are the populist revolution---let's come together as a 99% vs global banking 1% ----


The only SHAKE-UP to US city hall's these farm team global banking 1% candidates and pols will be doing----it MOVING FORWARD filling our US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES with global 1% and their 2% representing only global foreign corporations. HARRIS promotes every real estate/landlord/tenant policy global banking writes PRETENDING it helps our Baltimore 99% WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens.


WE ARE OUR OWN LEADERS----BE REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES.

If a civil rights NGO claiming to be populist have not been shouting against these LANDLORD/TENANT policies we discussed this week-----and we don't hear any shouting----THESE ARE FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING FAKE LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE groups.




Joshua Harris, the Baltimore Green Party's first mayoral candidate, pledges to shake up City Hall

Yvonne WengerContact Reporter

The Baltimore Sun  Oct 20, 2016



Joshua Harris, the Green Party candidate in Baltimore's mayoral race, has a 21-page plan to revolutionize the city. He wants citizens to vote on budget decisions, a new public bank in which to invest tax dollars and a thriving medical marijuana industry.


But sharing that vision with voters across the city's 92 square miles is a dilemma. With few paid staff and about $1,000 in his campaign account, a billboard propped up in the back of Harris' burgundy pickup truck is perhaps the most visible sign he is in the race.



Harris, a former journalist who works in communications, said he is prepared to take on the city's behemoth Democratic Party, which has controlled City Hall for a half century. He faces Democrat Catherine E. Pugh, Republican Alan Walden and write-in candidates including former Mayor Sheila Dixon in the Nov. 8 election.


"People tell me they want their streets to be fixed. They want their schools to be better. They don't care if the letter next to the person's name is a 'D,' 'R' or a 'G,'" Harris, 30, said. "It's about who is going to get the job done and who is bringing solutions to the table.


"They don't want the same old, same old."


Jill Gordon and her 10-year-old daughter, Sage Sissoko, popped up from their seats at a recent youth film festival to introduce themselves to Harris. He had just finished telling a couple of dozen people about his candidacy. Harris called himself — a 6-foot-4, former semi-professional basketball player — the "little, big guy" in the race.

"I like that he's young and fresh and has new ideas," said Gordon of Remington. "He's relatable."
But Gordon, 37, said she wasn't sure if she'll vote for Harris. She's not convinced he can be competitive.




"That's what makes me sad," she said. "I'm pulling for him."
Harris is the city Green Party's first mayoral candidate, according to Andy Ellis, co-chairman of the Baltimore Greens. The party has about 1,200 active registered voters in Baltimore, compared to more than 300,000 Democrats and 32,000 Republicans.




Ellis said the party's candidates have outperformed voter registration numbers at the ballot box in the past. Across the country, candidates from the Green Party — founded in 1984 — have been elected to a variety of offices, including mayor and state lawmaker.

Given the campaign Harris has waged over the past year — he has several banners around the city, has knocked on 6,000 doors, has participated in phone banks, maintains active social media accounts and attended numerous community meetings, festivals and forums — he will be a force on Election Day, Ellis said.



"His economic development platform looks at keeping Baltimore's money inside Baltimore and returns the decision-making power to the people in neighborhoods through participatory budgeting," Ellis said. "His plans fuse together for economic and racial justice.


OH, REALLY ELLIS? GREENS ARE INDEED MOVING FORWARD.




"He puts real ideas and a real vision forward."



Political scientist


ToddEberlyof St. Mary's College of Maryland said Harris faces long odds against winning. "You can think up a scenario, but there is no real history of electoral wins for Greens in Baltimore," Eberly said. "There is no real machine to turn out the votes. Those are very difficult things to overcome."



But Harris' campaign will help to show disillusioned voters that they have alternatives, Eberly said. "We'll wait and see how many votes he can get, but it could send a significant message to the Democratic Party power bosses."


Aimee Pohl, 40, of Govans, said she switched her party affiliation from Democrat to Green after this year's primary. Pohl said she was frustrated with national party politics. She was intrigued by Harris' campaign flier and decided to volunteer for him. Pohl called Harris an "incredibly kind and smart and authentic person."




"Josh is the only person who has actual real ideas for true change in the city," she said. "It feels very much to me that Catherine Pugh is going to continue with Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's stance on things with a couple of tweaks here and there."


Harris, who lives in Hollins Market and is engaged to be married, moved to Baltimore about five years ago to take a job working in communications for Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate African-American fraternity.


A Chicago native, he was raised by a single mother who worked multiple jobs. He spent a lot of time with his grandmother, a former union president who worked with President Barack Obama when he was a community organizer. Harris said his father is an ex-offender who went on to own and operate three bookstores.



In his youth, the candidate found basketball an outlet. "If It wasn't for a recreation center that was open and funded, who knows what trouble I would have gotten into or where I would be today." He went on to play high school, college and semi-pro basketball. He lived and played overseas for about a year.



After graduating from Augsburg College in Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in communication, Harris worked in media.




He also has worked as a legislative aide to Del. Charles E. Sydnor III, a Baltimore County Democrat, who called Harris "an honorable person" who has strong beliefs and is a hard worker.



While he worked in Annapolis, Harris helped draft legislation to update the state's wire tap law, setting the groundwork to authorize police body cameras.



The Hollins Market resident helped start a group that uses the arts to restore the neighborhood, and he has volunteered extensively with various organizations, including serving on the board for the Southwest Partnership.


When Harris announced his campaign for mayor last November, he had planned to run as a Democrat in a crowded field. He switched to the Green Party early this year after he said members of the party contacted him.


"The Green Party is a party that I have always known to align more with my values and views," Harris said. "It is a party that has been focused on social justice, racial justice, economic justice and environmental justice."

 ONE WORLD ONE TECHNOLOGY AND ENERGY GRID-------THIS IS JUSTICE FOR 99% WE THE PEOPLE-----REALLY????  YOU ARE CALLING DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE--------POLICIES LEADING TO JUSTICE.



At the heart of Harris' plan is his proposal to set up a public bank that would hold and leverage the city's property taxes, fees, fines and other revenue — modeled after the Bank of North Dakota. The city could benefit from interest earned on the account and grant loans to businesses and new homeowners at low rates, he said.


Harris said he would fight for stronger community benefits agreements tied to public financing, high-speed municipal Wi-Fi and living wages. He wants to foster a new industry around retail cannabis and clean energy manufacturing. He also calls for more community schools and additional de-escalation and cultural competence training for police.

ALL OF THESE ARE GLOBAL BANKING 1% POLICIES--------NOT A REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE POLICY FOR OUR 99% WE THE PEOPLE IN SIGHT.



"The root cause of crime is unequivocally poverty," Harris said. "Baltimore is a blue-collar town that has been without blue-collar work since Bethlehem Steel and General Motors left. My vision is to transition our city from a blue-collar town into a green-collar town."

____________________________________________

We READ constantly the public policy stances of all groups calling themselves CIVIL RIGHTS---POPULIST------and here are those LATINO civil rights groups which have not SHOUTED against any of these public policies they KNOW are staging our 99% of new immigrants whether documented or illegal for LOSING ALL THEIR WEALTH.

This is why the STRUGGLE for our 99% of black citizens-----the STRUGGLE for our 99% of US labor union members----the STRUGGLE for our new 99% of immigrants started early 1900s having been successful for several decades has these few decades DISAPPEARED.

THESE GROUPS BELOW ARE BEING LED BY GLOBAL BANKING 5% FREEMASON/GREEK PLAYERS WHO BRING OUR 99% WE THE PEOPLE OUT TO MARCH FOR PUBLIC POLICY KILLING OUR FUTURE---ESPECIALLY IN HOUSING.

We out continuously our US labor union 5% players as leaders since our US corporations went global.  These US labor unions went from being REAL left social progressive supporting workers----to killing our US and immigrant workers by pushing global banking policies as discussed this week.

WE ARE SHOUTING TO OUR NEW TO AMERICA 99% OF IMMIGRANTS---PLEASE TAKE TIME TO EDUCATE ON REAL US HISTORY ---NOT TODAY'S REVISED HISTORY TO UNDERSTAND WHAT MADE AMERICA FIRST WORLD, DEVELOPED, STRONGEST ECONOMY WITH BEST QUALITY OF LIFE IN WORLD HISTORY.



Since most of these global banking labor players are men-----we will use a phrase from our US military -------GROW A PAIR NANCIES---------STAND UP AND BE US CITIZENS.


MOST RESPECTED? By whom???


The Nation’s Most Respected Latino Civil Rights Organizations LCLAA, LULAC, NCLR, and Hispanic Federation, Join the 47th Anniversary of the Reenactment of the Selma to Montgomery March


March 7, 2012
Contact: Paloma Zuleta, pzuleta@lulac.org
(202) 812-4477 (M)
202-833-6130 ext.103 (O)





Washington, D.C. – Today, in front of the AFL-CIO headquarters, a delegation of Latino leaders, policymakers, and stakeholders boarded a bus routed to Selma, Alabama in order to participate in the reenactment of the historic civil rights marches of 1965. The Latino delegation will march alongside civil rights leaders in Selma and demand for the repeal of Alabama’s anti-Latino legislation, HB 56.

The event known as “Bloody Sunday” was a historic event when 600 protesters were forced back by state troopers and local police with tear gas and clubs as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River into Montgomery. Due to the police force brutality, over 50 people were hospitalized on March 7, 1965. Since that fateful day, thousands convene to retrace the steps of history by marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to remember the day that a group of unarmed men and women bravely stood their ground against blatant discrimination. Unfortunately, 47 years after “Bloody Sunday” we are still experiencing civil rights violations.

“In 1965, the Selma to Montgomery March made history and changed America; it marked the peak of the civil rights movement. Today many states have launched an all-out coordinated assault on democracy by attacking workers’ rights, voting rights, public education and by promoting anti-immigrant legislation. Almost 50 years after the civil rights movement secured major gains immigrants are still fighting for basic rights and dignity. We will not permit any more policies that marginalize Latinos and their children and drive them out of jobs and communities,” stated Hector Sanchez, LCLAA’s Executive Director.

“Today, 47 years after the passing of monumental legislation, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, immigrant men, women and children are degraded in our laws, and in our minds,” said LULAC National President Margaret Moran. “We can blame ourselves for the dehumanization of the undocumented community because we have allowed terms like “illegal alien” to identify their class. We march with our sister organizations and the African American community to make clear that although the Hispanic community is diverse and disagreements over comprehensive immigration reform and the Dream Act exist, we will not turn our backs and ignore the plight of the undocumented.”

THE DREAM ACT IS A FAR-RIGHT WING IMMIGRATION POLICY ---NOT A REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE IMMIGRATION POLICY.


“In an extraordinary show of support from the African-American community, immigration is one of the key focal points of this year’s commemoration of the historic Selma to Montgomery march. The African-American community knows as we do that anti-immigrant laws and voter ID laws are really an all-out assault on civil rights. We are deeply proud to be marching with our African-American brothers and sisters and NCLR is very appreciative of the strong commitment from our sister Latino organizations to this important event,” stated Janet Murguia, NCLR President and CEO.

“Today, as we set off to recreate this historic event and march for civil rights, we remember the thousands of individuals who have sacrificed everything to gain the right to vote. It is our solemn responsibility to protect this hard-fought right and ensure that every American citizen - regardless of race, ethnicity and income - is able to vote unimpeded and fully participate in our democracy,” stated Jose Calderon, Interim President of the Hispanic Federation.

The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) is the leading national organization for Latino(a) workers , that educates, empowers and increases opportunities for this diverse, dynamic and growing community.

OH, REALLY??????


LCLAA was born in 1972 out of the need to inform Latinos about workers’ rights, raise national awareness regarding the issues that affect their well-being and increase their influence in the political process. LCLAA advocates and mobilizes our 52 chapters across the U.S. and Puerto Rico to strive for justice, economic equality, social dignity and a higher quality of life for Latinos and all working families.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is a volunteer-based organization that empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities.

OH, REALLY?????


Headquartered in Washington, DC, with 900 councils around the United States and Puerto Rico, LULAC’s programs, services and advocacy address the most important issues for Latinos, meeting critical needs of today and the future. For more information, visit www.lulac.org.

NCLR—the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States—works to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans. For more information on NCLR, please visit www.nclr.org or follow along on Facebook and Twitter.

The mission of the Hispanic Federation is to empower and advance the Hispanic community. The Hispanic Federation provides grants and services to a broad network of Latino non-profit agencies serving the most vulnerable members of the Hispanic community and advocates nationally with respect to the vital issues of education, health, immigration, economic empowerment, civic engagement and the environment.



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August 23rd, 2018

8/23/2018

0 Comments

 
As we come to the end of this week's discussion of LANDLORD/RENTER public policy MOVING FORWARD in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----- making clear that all these policies, contracts, deals, appointments to development boards et al--------done by what all US 99% WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens KNOW are criminal, corrupt, self-enrichment politicians in office through US election rigging and fraud-------can be VOIDED ----EASY PEASY.

When we hear EMPIRE ALICE 5% freemason/Greek players saying MOVING FORWARD is too far along---that there is no way to STOP MOVING FORWARD----that all those laws passed makes it impossible to reverse and rebuild our US 20th century sovereignty------



WE SHOUT---------WHEN POLITICIANS DECIDE TO BECOME CRIMINALS THEY NO LONGER HAVE POWER TO LEGISLATE----THEY NO LONGER HAVE POWER TO CONDUCT CIVIL CONTRACTS AND AGREEMENTS---THEY CANNOT APPOINT PEOPLE TO ANY PUBLIC AGENCY.



So, all these global banking 1% corporations and rich coming into our US cities made FAILED STATES from all these criminal activities of pols still in office---with farm team pols coming in and doing the same------KNOW that all business done by a Baltimore City Council and mayor----KNOW all business done by a Maryland Assembly and governor ----



CAN AT ANY POINT BE VOIDED REGARDLESS OF SIGNED CONTRACTS-----REGARDLESS OF PHYSICAL CONSTRUCTION. ANYONE DOING BUSINESS WITH CRIMINAL AND CORRUPT POLITICIANS WILL BE GREAT BIG LOSERS.



Any building in US cities deemed FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES will end in hands of our US 99% WE THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE -----as too in US cities in your neck of woods.



official misconduct (redirected from Malfeasance in office)


Also found in: Wikipedia.
official misconduct

n. improper and/or illegal acts by a public official which violate his/her duty to follow the law and act on behalf of the public good. Often such conduct is under the guise or "color" of official authority. (See: official)



official misconduct

noun criminal conduct by a public official, criminal conduct by an administration's member, dereliction of performance in office, deviation from rectitude, dishonest management, failing to uphold a sworn oath of office, failure in office, guilty act while a public official, illegal act, illegality by a public official, improper conduct by a public official, impropriety by a public official, maladministration by a public servant, malfeasance by a public servant, mis-administration by a public servant, misconduct by a public official, misdeeds by a public official, misfeasance by a public official, misgovernment, misguidance by a public official, mismanagement by an office holder, misprision by an office holder, non-feasance by an office holder, offenses while in office, transgressions by an office holder, turpitude by an office holder, wrongdoing, by a public official



By Michael J. Hutter


PROSECUTING PUBLIC OFFICIALS/FIGURES
FOR CORRUPTION: THE APPROACH IN
THE UNITED STATES






I. INTRODUCTION
A. Overview
1)
Public corruption in any form is the misuse of a public or government office for private gain. Its existence is an indication that something has gone wrong in the
management of the government office, whether it be federal, state, or local.

In that regard, it is a basic tenet that government is not to be used for personal enrichment and the extending of benefits to the corrupt.


2)
The prevention of corruption is essential not only to make government work for its intended purpose, e.g., ensure that public officials are using their office to
further the public interest and not to enrich themselves or others, but also to preserve public confidence in the democratic process.


As to the latter, the United States Supreme Court has observed:

“[A]
democracy is effective only if the people have faith in those who govern, and that faith is bound to be shattered when high officials and their appointees engage in activities which arouse suspicions of malfeasance and corruption.”

(United States v. Miss. Valley Generating Co., 364 U.S. 520, 562 [1961]).

__________________________________________




We want to remind our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE of our 300 year COMMON LAW and Federal court rulings surrounding LANDLORD/TENET laws that benefit both a LANDLORD and a TENET.

When we allow the designation US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE to exist-----we are negating all local sovereign laws-----all state sovereign laws---all Federal sovereign laws regarding GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES especially when they and/or the land is owned by foreign entities----like global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS.


We shared these few days the global banking 1% goals of using dismantlement of all US safety net programs especially around HOUSING and the dismantlement of TAX UNIFORMITY laws allowing selective taxation that is illegal.  Our US 99% of landlords will be killed if these policies MOVE FORWARD AND our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE being FORCED to be renters because of attacks on our wealth.

Below we see the current laws protecting LANDLORDS that will disappear with RENTER CREDIT----and the power of LEASE AGREEMENTS protecting our TENETS as renters disappear as well.


'FAILURE TO PAY RENT
Generally


The court action is called a “suit for rent due” and the eviction procedure for nonpayment of rent is called "summary ejectment". If a tenant fails to pay rent when it is due, the landlord has the right to repossess the premises by filing a complaint under oath in District Court (sometimes called “Rent Court”) asking for repossession of the premises, the amount of rent due, and costs of the suit.

The action for non-payment of rent is only available for a written or oral lease or rental agreement that is more than 3 months.


Read the law: Baltimore City Code of Public Local Laws, Article 4, § 9-1, 9-2 and 9-5  (link is external)'

Since the goals of MOVING FORWARD are to build only residential housing being located on global corporate campuses with those global corporations tying their employees to living on those campuses having power to hire anyone they want rather than abiding by EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS-----a person will lose their rights to rent that apartment along with losing a job---changing a job.

YOU DON'T WORK HERE ---YOU DON'T LIVE HERE.




'During the Term of the Lease
The warranty of habitability is a continuing warranty and the tenant may pursue legal action for breach of this warranty at any time during the tenancy if the dwelling becomes unfit for human habitation. The tenant may also use breach of this warranty as a defense in an action of summary ejectment or distress for rent'.

We discuss from time to time the inability of a Baltimore City citizen to get a response to complaints against derelict landlords---no agency is providing oversight and accountability ----renter's court can end in awards for renters  who then cannot find a pathway to collect awards.  Now, global investment firms as a city's residential development could care less what US LANDLORD/TENET laws say-----they do whatever they want.






Rental and housing laws in Baltimore City: city laws


WRITTEN LEASES


Landlord Must Provide Tenant with a Copy of the Lease



At the time of the lease signing, the landlord must give the tenant a copy of the lease signed by both the tenant and landlord. The lease must include the following contact information:



1.      The name of the property owner and either their residence address and telephone number or their business address and telephone number; or

2.      The name of the person who has been designated by the property owner to be their agent or managing operator of the property, and either their residence address and telephone number or their business address and telephone number.


Any owner who is not customarily present in an office in the metropolitan Baltimore area must include the information of a managing agent in a lease.

The property owner must notify the tenant of any contact information changes by first class mail within 10 days.


Compliance, Enforcement and Penalties


The property owner is primarily responsibility for compliance with this law. Because of that, a tenant has to right to ask a court to prevent or stop a property owner’s violation of the law. A property owner who violates a provision of this law is guilty of a misdemeanor and is subject to a fine of up to $100 for each violation.



Exemptions


None of these provisions apply to:



1.      Rental units in hotels, motels, inns, tourist homes, and rooming and boarding houses that are rented primarily to transient guests for less than 14 days;



2.      Rental units in a hospital, convent, monastery, extended medical care facility, asylum, non-profit home for the aged, or dormitory owned and operated by an institution of higher education;



3.      Individual rental units that a government agency owns, operates or manages; and



4.      Rental units within the premises occupied by the owner as his or her residence.



Read the law: Baltimore City Code, Housing sand Urban Renewal, Article 13, § 7  (link is external)



WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR HUMAN HABITATION

When a Tenant Takes Occupancy



In any written or oral residential lease, the landlord is presumed to promise (or “warrant”) that the rented dwelling is "fit for human habitation". This means that the premises must not have any conditions that endanger the life, health and safety of the tenants, including, but not limited to vermin or rodent infestation, lack of sanitation, lack of heat, lack of running water, or lack of electricity. The provisions of this law cannot be waived by any written or oral lease.



If the dwelling is not fit for human habitation upon occupancy, the tenant must first notify the landlord of the dangerous condition. The notice must be by one of the following methods:


1.      A violation notice from the Department of Housing and Community Development or other government agency;



2.      A letter sent by certified mail to the landlord; or



3.      Actual notice of the defect or condition.

After notifying the landlord, the tenant may exercise the following remedies within the first 30 days of occupancy:



1.      Tenant may bring an action against the landlord for breach of contract, which may include a request for actual damages suffered by tenant; and/or


2.      Tenant may bring an action to rescind (cancel) the lease and request a return of all deposits and money paid toward rent during the period of the breach of warranty.



The tenant may also use any other remedies available under law, such as rent escrow.



If the tenant, a member of his or her family, the tenant’s agent or the tenant’s guest acts in bad faith and refuses entry to the landlord or the landlord’s agent who are trying to repairing the condition, the court will order the tenant to pay landlord's court costs and reasonable attorney's fees. The court will also require the tenant to pay for the repairs if the dangerous condition was caused by the tenant, a member of the tenant’s family, the tenant’s agent or the tenant’s guest.



Read the law: Baltimore City Code of Public Local Laws, Article 4, § 9-14.1  (link is external)



During the Term of the Lease


The warranty of habitability is a continuing warranty and the tenant may pursue legal action for breach of this warranty at any time during the tenancy if the dwelling becomes unfit for human habitation. The tenant may also use breach of this warranty as a defense in an action of summary ejectment or distress for rent.



"Fit for human habitation" means the premises shall not have any conditions which endanger the life, health and safety of the tenants involving vermin or rodent infestation in two or more units, lack of sanitation, lack of heat, lack of running water, or lack of electricity, except where:



1.      The tenant is responsible for payment of the water and electric charges; and


2.      The lack of water or electricity is the direct result of the tenant’s failure to pay the water and electric charges.


The tenant will be required to pay for the repairs (collected as rent) if the dangerous condition was caused by the tenant, a member of his or her family, or visitors.


If the dwelling becomes unfit for human habitation, the tenant must first notify the landlord of the dangerous condition before tenant sues the landlord for breach of warranty. The notice must be by one of the following methods:



1.      A violation notice from the Department of Housing and Community Development or other government agency;


2.      A letter sent by certified mail to the landlord; or



3.      Actual notice of the defect or condition.



The landlord has a “reasonable time” after notification to repair the defect or damage alleged by the tenant (repairs must be made with “diligence and without culpable delay” and more than 30 days is presumed unreasonable). Once the landlord finished the repairs, they must notify the tenant or the Department of Housing and Community Development in writing.



If tenant sues the landlord or defends him or herself in a case brought by the landlord and is successful, the amount of money s/he recovers will be computed as of the date of landlord's actual knowledge of the defect. The recovery will be the difference between the amount of rent the tenant paid or owed during the period of the breach and the reasonable rental value of the dwelling in its defective condition.



Read the law: Baltimore City Code of Public Local Laws, Article 4, § 9-14.2  (link is external)
______________________________________

Every US state has 300 years of governing laws tied to LANDLORD/TENET laws whether statutes, local ordinances, COMMON LAW, and court decisions.  Our US Constitution and Federal laws tied to COMMON LAW place court precedence over immediate STATUTE.  Failure of any court or city/state attorney to ENFORCE these 300 years of US court precedence is PUBLIC MALFEASANCE. 

THAT IS THE #1 DUTY OF ANY US CITY ATTORNEY---US STATE ATTORNEY---TO PROTECT CITIZENS' RIGHTS WHETHER THEY BE LANDLORD OR TENET.


So, Baltimore City council cannot simply create a statute----or change a zoning or charter law if it fails to meet COMMON LAW history----which all of MOVING FORWARD policies do fail to meet.

DESIGNATION OF US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES CANNOT NEGATE ANY OF OUR US 300 YEARS OF COMMON LAW, US CONSTITUTIONAL AND FEDERAL LAW AND COURT RULINGS CREATING PRECEDENCE.


'Landlords and Tenants: Rights and Responsibilities

The rights and duties of landlords and tenants in Minnesota are spelled out in federal law, state statutes, local ordinances, safety and housing codes, common law, contract law, and a number of court decisions. These responsibilities can vary from place to place around the state'.

Now, here in Maryland we have a global banking 1% FAKE labor and justice organization MARYLAND PUBLIC JUSTICE always pretending to be left social progressive in civil rights while always pushing forward global corporate policy that will kill our 99% WE THE PEOPLE rights---just as they did the current LANDLORD/TENET policies discussed this week.  Our Maryland Attorney General FROSH only protects the global corporation never thinking about these 99% civil rights, COMMON LAW and US court history.  It is our Baltimore CITY ATTORNEY who would make all this TOP PRIORITY in taking to court Baltimore City Hall criminal and corrupt actions regarding these development policies.

This article is long and very boring----but please glance through to understand what GLOBAL BANKING 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have been ignoring these few decades and what our local US city global banking 5% freemason/Greek player pols and institutions have illegally pushed as public policy surrounding rights of LANDLORD/TENETS-----

What MOVING FORWARD has done is eliminate the entire premise of CO-TENANTS often including our PUBLIC LANDS/PUBLIC AGENCIES as one partner in transactions with a corporation/business.  When our city/county councils think of themselves as corporations --- not public servants---they think they can enter CORPORATE-CORPORATE land deals with COMMON LAW tied only to those transactions---when in fact they CANNOT---

THEY ARE A PUBLIC ENTITY REQUIRED TO OPERATE AS PUBLIC OPERATIVES UNDER COMMON LAWS.




SURVEY OF PRODUCING STATES’ COMMON LAW ON RIGHTS & LIABILITIES OF CO-TENANTS OF SEVERED MINERAL ESTATES


Natural Resources L aw Institute 2014


By Jeffrey M. Swann

PPGMR Law, PLLC
P.O. Box 251618
Little Rock, AR 72225-
1618
(501) 603.9000
jeff@ppgmrlaw.com


I.
Introduction


One of the well-established principles of property law is that land may be horizontally severed into surface and subsurface estates so that legal title vests in different owners.


1
The purpose of this memo is to survey producing states’ common law protections and liabilities afforded the mineral co-tenant relationship in the decision to develop the severed estate. Importantly, the subject of this article is not the relationship between mineral co-tenants and the surface owner or between co-tenants of a property that includes both the surface and mineral estates, as these relationships may be
treated differently by the courts in determining rights and liabilities of development.


This severance can occur via an express grant, reservation, or exception. Over time, as a severed mineral estate is devised, sold, gifted or otherwise transferred down the line, its title inevitably vests in more than one person or entity.


When it does, issues often arise amongst the co-owners of the mineral estate concerning its development. As these issues are asage-old as concept of subsurface estates themselves, courts in producing states have long-standing and predict able property laws which govern these relationships in severed estates.


2
This survey is not a recitation of every case from all producing jurisdiction; rather, its purpose is to highlight the preeminent cases of producing jurisdictions and the two prevailing approaches that courts have taken when faced with this issue under a variety of circumstances.


II.
Co-ownership of Severed Mineral Estates



There are three types of concurrent estates: tenancy in common, joint tenancy and tenancy by the entirety.



While all three are heavily incorporated into modern
property law of the United States,
the tenancy in common estate is most commonly encountered with respect to oil and gas ownership rights and disputes. As such, this article is limited to only the rights and liabilities of tenants in common, i.e. co-tenants.



A tenancy in common is characterized by co-owners holding the same property by separate and distinct titles, but having a unity of possession.


3
Each co-tenant is entitled to possession and enjoyment of any part or all of the common property, as long as he or she does not exclude the co-tenant.


4
III.


Majority Versus Minority Approaches
to Development Rights/Liabilities



There are two general approaches among mineral-producing jurisdictions on the development of severed minerals by a co-tenant without the consent of the other co-tenant(s). Under both approaches, the law has struggled to balance the competing interests of the individual co-tenants while maintaining a policy to efficiently develop natural resources for the benefit of society.



A.
Majority View States.
The usual approach, adopted by the majority of producing jurisdictions, is to allow each co-tenant the right to develop without permission of the all other co-tenants, subject to a duty to account to other co-tenants for their share of minerals, less the reasonable cost of production.



5
The developing co-tenant may not, however, prevent
other co-tenants from developing the minerals directly or through a lessee. And, a non-consenting co-tenant may be able to seek a partition, but usually cannot enjoin development absent some evidence of reckless injury to the property. This approach is fundamentally rooted in the principle of unity of possession in the entirety.



6
Producing jurisdictions expressly or implicitly adopting the majority approach, or some facet thereof, include:

Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida,
Georgia,
Illinois,
Indiana,
Kansas,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana,
Missouri, New York, Ohio,
Pennsylvania,
Tennessee, and Wyoming.


Noticeably, this approached is not limited to a particular producing region, as it has been adopted by numerous states within the

Southeast

(Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky)
,
Northeast


(New York, Pennsylvania), Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri,Ohio), and

Northwest
(California, Montana, Wyoming)

.
__________________________________________


In the recent past-----global banking pols have mostly ignored all these COMMON LAW land ---landlord/tenant policies when MINING OR ENERGY interests want to WILDCAT their way into our communities----but now this is being expanded to ANY LAND DEAL for any REASON.

COMMON LAW is engendered here in US in founding documents to bring forward AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT I AM CITIZEN power from OLD WORLD EUROPE----but they do not supersede our US CONSTITUTIONAL rights.  The US Constitution compliments citizens' rights under COMMON LAW and expands them.  STATUTES do not supersede US Constitution or COMMON LAW----if they are written to violate these documents our 3 BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT have a duty to VOID.

The LANDLORD/TENANT policies we have discussed this week MOVING FORWARD in UK------AND MOVING FORWARD in Baltimore and all US cities deemed FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----completely ignore ALL of these US SOVEREIGN LAWS surrounding LAND OWNERSHIP/LANDLORD/TENANT LAWS.

We can ask any US LAW SCHOOL------whether University of Maryland Law School----or LOYOLA Law School---or University of Baltimore Law School----they all KNOW what our local US cities like Baltimore are MOVING FORWARD is ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, PUBLIC MALFEASANCE.


BUT global investment real estate development corporations do not have to abide by these US, state, and local sovereign laws say global banking 5% freemason/Greek player pols----OH, REALLY? Then they are not LEGALLY allowed to exist in our US cities and counties ARE THEY?


Real Estate Law



3 Differences Between Virginia Landlord and Tenant Common Law and Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (VRLTA)


September 13, 2013 Keithley Law, PLLC


If you’ve owned rental property or rented property in Virginia, you may have had to learn the differences between what is required by the VRLTA, also known as, the Virginia Residential Landlord and Tenant Act and what is required under common law. 




In plain English, if you’re a renter, and your lease doesn’t refer to the VRLTA, your landlord isn’t required to do anything, unless you’re covered by the common law or the default rule. The obvious exceptions are federal housing laws and anti-discrimination regulations. 


Read our previous blogs regarding landlord and tenant laws in Virginia to find more information.



Title 55 of the 1950 Code of Virginia, as amended, is the statute that deals with property and conveyances. Almost everything pertaining to the legal disposition of real property and the transfer (buying/selling/renting) of real property can be found in this Chapter.

In general, the VRLTA is codified in Section 13.2, Title 55, of the 1950 Code of Virginia, as amended. However, the common law is covered by Section 13, Title 55, of the 1950 Code of Virginia, as amended. 

Here are 3 Differences Between Virginia Landlord and Tenant Act and the Common Law:

(note: there are many other differences, but this is a partial list)




1. Security Deposits


VRLTA: Landlord can’t collect more than two months of rent as security deposit. Need to keep in interest-bearing account if held longer than 13 months. Landlord must return within 45 days but provide itemized deductions from security deposit within 30 days.


Covered by Section 55-248.15:1 of the Virginia Code.  




Common Law:
Silent. No cap, no requirement for interest-bearing account, no time limits to return, but in my experience, courts will require that landlords return security deposits within 45 days of move-out, even if your lease doesn’t incorporate the VRLTA.



2. No Signed Lease or Failure to Provide Lease


In other words, if you discover your tenant didn’t sign a written lease, you are better off, in most cases, if you incorporated this part of the VRLTA into your lease. 



VRLTA: An unsigned lease under the VRLTA treats the landlord more favorably than the common law does.
According to the Virginia Code Section 55-248.8, an unsigned lease has the same effect as a signed lease if your tenant moved in, paid rent without reservation, for up to one-year. This means that even if you didn’t enter into a written lease agreement with your tenant, you can treat your tenant as a year-to-year tenant; not just a month-to-month tenant.



Common Law:
Silent on this issue. Typically, without a signed lease agreement, the tenancy is only month-to-month.



3. What do Landlords Have to Disclose (Mandatory Disclosures)


This is an interesting one. Landlords subject to the VRLTA must disclose certain issues:



Disclosure of mold in dwelling units:  Landlords have to disclose it if there is known mold problems as part of the written move-in inspection report.

Required disclosures for properties located adjacent to a military air installation: This is a noise provision and statute enacted to warn prospective tenants of potential accidents. There is also a remedy for nondisclosure.Defective drywall disclosures: Mandatory and also a remedy for nondisclosure under Section 55-248.12:2 of the Virginia Code; remedy for nondisclosure. 



Common Law: Mold disclosure same as VRLTA and governed by Section 55-225.7.






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August 22nd, 2018

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We wanted to show yesterday how other nations like UK have already MOVED FORWARD the next attack on their 99% sovereign citizens' wealth using again the HOUSING MARKET----this time selling to adults close to retirement the idea of being a LANDLORD to increase retirement funds.  As we saw in UK---the scheme never had a goal of HELPING either those citizens needing to be RENTERS----or those citizens wanting to be LANDLORDS----it bilked both population groups moving all wealth to global banking 1%.

If our US 99% of WE THE PEOPLE and our new to US immigrant citizens look at what US investment firms are calling GOOD INVESTMENTS----we will see these global banking 5% freemason/Greek players pushing these same investments ---adults near retirement as LANDLORDS ---KNOWING public policy goals are already in place to bilk these investors.  Remember, today our US citizens will not find a single WALL STREET INVESTMENT FIRM that is not tied to TEAM GLOBAL BANKING killing team 99% WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens.

It will take our US global banking 5% player pols this coming decade to install those same UK policies so we feel our 70-80 year old LANDLORDS will be able to maintain a profit margin on their buildings----what will hit those age groups will be soaring utility rates via global VEOLA WATER AND WASTE CORPORATIONS controlling our US city utilities-----and soaring property taxes, fees, and fines.  All these will rise but it will take about a decade for LANDLORDS to be hit hardest.


We have no doubt that our global banking Baltimore Development FAKE labor and justice organization leaders are already selling these LANDLORD investment schemes pretending to be helping our aging adults.





Building a Rental Business Plan for Financial Freedom
Written on April 15, 2015 by Jimmy Moncrief, updated on January 5, 2016



This article will teach you how to set goals, develop systems and create a business plan that will help you achieve financial freedom with rental properties.

I’m Jimmy Moncrief, a multifamily real estate investor, bank credit officer, and founder of Real Estate Finance HQ.



I joined Audible last year blasted through a lot of books during my commute to work. One book in particular, had an amazing impact on me.


The book was How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, written by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert Comic strip.



One of my favorite quotes from the books was:


“Losers have goals, winners have systems” – Scott Adams


Like me, you probably have some kind of a goal related to real estate. Perhaps it’s something like: “Buy my first property” or “Own at least 10 rental units by the end of the year.”  Don’t worry… I don’t think you are a loser as the quote suggests!



I also have big real estate goals, but I realize that simply having a goal is useless.
I think people should stop asking about goals, and start asking about systems. What systems are you putting in place to accomplish your goals? Writing your goals down on paper is easy. However, developing systems to accomplish your goals is hard.




Specifically, what have you done today to accomplish your yearly goals?


What is a System?

What exactly is a system? To me, systems are simply a routine or habit.
Something that you could, in theory, document and eventually have somebody else do it so you can scale your business.
The most important part about systems is consistency.



“For changes to be of any true value, they’ve got to be lasting and consistent.” – Anthony Robbins


Building Your Plan

The trick is to not only build your business plan, but to accomplish everything in it.


Now that we have established that daily actions and systems are absolutely critical to achieving long-term goals, let’s go through some exercises so you can document everything from your long-term vision to your day-to-day tasks.




1. Vision


Ask yourself, in a perfect world, where do you want to be in five years?  What does your perfect day look like?
My vision is:
  • To pay off house,
  • Accumulate five paid-off rental properties and,
  • Make over $100K/year as a real estate finance authority speaker and trainer.
Now we are going to over the steps from Goals and Systems to Daily Actions




2. Mission



What is your personal mission? What are you trying to achieve?



For me, it is to:
  • Gain financial freedom through real estate investing and,
  • Educate the world on the different ways to finance real estate.
3. Objectives



Create measurable short and long-term goals that will help you calculate and measure your success along the way. For me, it’s
  • Reach $10K in revenue by the end of the first year
  • End the year with a 3 lending partners
4. Strategies




Identify how you will reach those objectives.
I will achieve my objectives by:
  • Networking with wholesalers that focus on multifamily projects.
  • Cultivate relationships with REO agents.
  • Get referrals from other real estate investors on who they use for lending
5. High-level Plans



High-level plans help to create a roadmap for implementing the strategies and achieving your objectives.
  • Secure two paid-speaking gigs in 2015
  • Rebrand website
  • Buy this more properties this year
  • Update my stakeholder book
  • Write two top-selling Kindle books
6. Daily Plans




Ideally you will break down your high-level plans into daily plans so every day, you will be working towards your long-term goals. It’s easy to push aside your plans thinking “I’ll do it later”, however, that’s a very bad habit to get into.




If you can work at least 15 minutes a day on a project that will accelerate your plans more than you think.





15 minutes a day
can make all the difference in the world
Commit tomorrow to start working on your real estate business the first thing every morning. Let me know in a week how much of a difference this has made.




7. Finances



This is my favorite part of a business plan – dissecting where the numbers come from.
Again, let’s start with a big goal – note – make it a lot bigger than you think.


Most people overestimate what they think they can accomplish in a day and underestimate what they think they can accomplish in a year.



Another reason to think big is you will probably need more money to be achieve financial freedom (or whatever your goal is) than you think.




Let me give you a real life example:


My wife and I are very blessed to have a paid-off rental property.  It was our first house and we put 20% down on a 15-year mortgage.  The first 2 years we owned it we paid a significant amount of debt down.  We have owned it over 12 years now, but it was paid-off a couple of years ago.



We get $800 in rent and have great long-term tenants who probably keep care of it better than we did.


However, in the past six-months I’ve made less than $2,000 in profit on this house!





Why? Let’s take a look:
  • October – I waived rent because they pressure-washed the deck, did a lot of landscaping and fixed some other things around the house
  • November & December – I used rent to pay property taxes
  • January – I used rent to pay property insurance
  • February – Actually made money (spent rent on kids’ birthday parties and 2 date nights with my wife)
  • March – Made money this month
Therefore, if you think you are going to be able to retire if you get 10-paid off rental properties (which I hear quite a bit of) I think you better recalculate some things.




Summary


I know this is a non-traditional way of looking at business plans.  However, from someone who looks at other people’s business plans for a living and decides if they get a loan or not, I believe this is not only a practical approach to developing your business plan, but also the most profitable.


Even if you already have a business, I highly encourage you to go through the steps above. You might discover (like I did) that by adding systems and more people to your processes, your business will become more profitable.


My Results
Well, because I added systems and people to deal with maintenance issues and other ongoing tenant issues, it freed up my time to look at more properties.  After I implemented this plan, I doubled the number of properties my real estate company owned.
Let me know in the comments how you have used systems to grow your real estate business.

_______________________________________________




Here is BALTIMORE HOUSING AUTHORITY-------it was outsourced and corporatized a few decades ago------it is not a PUBLIC AGENCY.  Baltimore Housing Authority does fall under FEDERAL HOUSING AGENCY----HUD.  It is HUD these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA that pushed our 99% WE THE PEOPLE into housing policies they KNEW would kill both our 99% of citizens wanting to be RENTERS----and our 99% of citizens wanting to be LANDLORDS.

Below we see our BALTIMORE HOUSING AUTHORITY selling the idea that IT HAS NEVER BEEN BETTER TO BE A LANDLORD in Baltimore while Baltimore City Council and Maryland State Assembly are passing all those UK housing policies to KILL both landlords and renters. 

Baltimore is not only staging the same RENTER CREDIT PAY DAY LOAN format to replace all Federal safety nets surrounding HOUSING----it has already started the illegal breaking of TAX UNIFORMITY ------already selecting LANDLORD real estate for HIGHER TAXATION.  In Baltimore if you are a LANDLORD-----you will pay higher property taxes and fees than a residential home-owner-----just as was installed in UK.


THIS IS ALL A MOVING FORWARD GOAL-----OUR BALTIMORE CITY COUNCIL AND MAYOR----OUR BALTIMORE STATE ASSEMBLY 5% FREEMASON/GREEK PLAY POLS ARE WORKING AS FAST AS THEY CAN TO INSTALL THIS NEXT GLOBAL BANKING 1% ATTACK ON US 99% WEALTH.


It is this BALTIMORE HOUSING AUTHORITY working with global banking 1% BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT which creates all those FAKE 'left social progressive' labor and justice organizations with 5% players as leaders pretending to be 'populist' helping the poor----seniors-----workers------civil rights...........JOBS, JOBS, JOBS......HOUSING, HOUSING, HOUSING.  This is NOT how we FIX BALTIMORE for our US 99% of citizens black, white, and brown and it kills our 99% of new immigrant citizens wanting to participate in a REAL housing economy.



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On August 7, 2017, HABC forwarded a letter to HABC Vendors regarding the proper contractual procedure for providing goods and services for HABC. Unfortunately, the file that was used to send out the notification included HABC landlords. If you received this notification, we ask that you please disregard it. We sincerely apologize for any confusion and inconvenience.






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We invite you to take a look at properties available for unsolicited bid
See how Baltimore is encouraging participation in housing the homeless.



Learn more about the participants in the Housing Choice Voucher Program and the importance of providing housing choice to voucher participants by clicking on this link



List your Property Online @ GoSection8!The listings are passed out to hundreds of "walk-in" tenants seeking Section 8 rental housing daily. Additionally, GOsection8.com allows properties to be viewed easily online. Find out more about this complimentary online tool.
_____________________________________________



Below we see RAGING GLOBAL BANKING 5% PLAYER POL ------Baltimore City Council President JACK YOUNG-----pretending that ILLEGAL SELECTIVE TAXATION LAWS are all about helping AFFORDABLE HOUSING------when the goal is killing LANDLORDS MOVING FORWARD.




'Baltimore City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young is lending his support to a proposal being introduced today that would increase taxes on certain property sales in the city to raise an estimated $20 million to fund affordable housing projects'.


There is not an AFFORDABLE HOUSING BONE in today's Baltimore City Council-----no TRUST FUND will be used for that purpose---it will be fraudulently misappropriated as all development funding in Baltimore is.  When we allow ILLEGAL SELECTIVE TAXATION to eliminate our US Constitutional and Federal TAX UNIFORMITY LAWS as Jack Young is doing below-----our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE will lose one of the strongest COMMON LAW policies in place during AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT------the US does not do SELECTIVE TAXATION.


“It feels a little confrontational to the landlords,” said BeVier, a partner at The Dominion Group. “It exacerbates the perception that Baltimore is not that friendly towards business.”

We appreciate THE DOMINION GROUP pointing out that LANDLORDS IN BALTIMORE are being targeted MOVING FORWARD.  What BeVier does not point out is THESE SELECTIVE TAXATION LAWS ARE ILLEGAL-----and does not point out that global investment firms tied to residential buildings will NOT be paying these taxes---only our US 99% WE THE LANDLORDS will.



The “Dominion Group

of Companies” is the informal identity of a number of companies founded and owned by Calvin Burgess of Guthrie, Oklahoma. These companies provide a diverse range of services and products, from office properties in the central U.S. to large-scale farming in Kenya. For over 20 years we have responded to opportunities to privatize governmental functions and projects for which state and federal agencies lacked the funding or flexibility to deliver themselves. In addition to government contracting and leasing, The Dominion Companies are involved in aircraft maintenance and modifications, lodging, manufacturing and commercial farming



The origin of this group of companies dates to 1977 when Mr. Burgess founded a general contracting firm. That business expanded into commercial real estate development in 1986, since which year the Dominion Group has sited, designed, built and financed over 3.2 million square feet of public and commercial properties. Active in North America, Central America and Africa, The Dominion Group pursues unique business opportunities, often with a contrarian approach to investment.



THE DOMINION GROUP allowed space in this BALTIMORE SUN article lobbies for real estate corporations.  There is no voice for our 99% of Baltimore citizens in this article.  Jack Young is indeed the face of global banking Baltimore Development, Greater Baltimore Development, and global hedge fund Johns Hopkins----AKA----our Baltimore City Council and mayor.  .....all this is happening in your neck of the woods!

Baltimore council president backs $20 million in property-sale tax hike to fund affordable housing

Ian DuncanContact Reporter

The Baltimore Sun
April 16, 2018




Baltimore City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young is lending his support to a proposal being introduced today that would increase taxes on certain property sales in the city to raise an estimated $20 million to fund affordable housing projects.




Voters approved the creation of an affordable housing trust fund in 2016 but city officials have not designated a revenue source for the fund. Young said generating money for the fund through a dedicated tax increase would be a “breakthrough.”



“It’s something that really needs to happen,” he said. “This is one of the important issues that is facing Baltimore city when you look at rising rates of rents.”


A bill being introduced in the City Council on Monday would increase the city’s 1.5 percent transfer tax to 2.1 percent and the recordation tax from 1 percent to 1.4 percent. The increases would apply only to properties sold to owners who intend to rent the buildings, not to buyers who intend to live in them.



Young has worked closely with Councilman John Bullock on the bill. After a working lunch for the council on Monday, 11 of the council’s 15 members had signed on as sponsors.


The proposal also has the backing of activist coalition Housing For All: Baltimore. The group estimates that the money raised through the tax could employ 1,000 people and create 400 affordable homes a year if it was spent on rehabilitating vacant property.



Matt Hill, an attorney at the Public Justice Center and a member of the group, said the tax represents a small proportion of each property sale but would have a big effect in Baltimore’s blighted neighborhoods by creating jobs, eliminating vacants and building permanent affordable homes.


“It would be revolutionary,” Hill said.

The idea is similar to another proposal under consideration in the City Council to slightly increase two taxes on all property sales. The new bill is forecast to raise double the amount of money should it pass, relying on steeper increases on a smaller set of sales.
Councilman Bill Henry, the lead sponsor of that bill, said he wanted to spread the effects of the tax increase more broadly, but said his priority is finding a way to fund affordable housing. Henry is a co-sponsor of the new bill.



“Clearly I thought on some level the way I was doing it was better but I’m a pragmatist,” Henry said. “This is a democracy. If more people want to do it this way than that way, we’ll do it this way.”




Hill said some housing activists are concerned that applying the tax increase to all property sales could make it harder for families to purchase homes in Baltimore.



But by exempting would-be homeowners from the tax, the new proposal could stoke opposition from developers and landlords.


Jack BeVier, a member of the Small Developers Collective, said he supports finding a way to put money in the housing trust fund but focusing only on business-related property sales is the wrong way to do it.



“It feels a little confrontational to the landlords,” said BeVier, a partner at The Dominion Group. “It exacerbates the perception that Baltimore is not that friendly towards business.”


Supporters of the bill say academic research has found that increasing property sales taxes doesn’t lead to higher rents, but BaVier said a new fee would push up the cost of doing projects in Baltimore.


Young said he would listen to developers’ concerns but that he was committed to proceeding with the legislation.
“We’re going talk to everybody but this is something we’re going to be wedded to and we’re going to get done,” he said.
____________________________________________




Here is the UK LANDLORD targeting with selective taxation already having those ADVERSE effects on our 99% choosing to seek retirement funds from owning RENTAL PROPERTY.  As we said----UK global banking 1% player pols have already pushed their 99% of real estate owners tied to rental property OUT OF BUSINESS with GREAT LOSSES ------this article simply states part of the damages.

So, Jack Young as Baltimore City Council President PRETENDING all this is about an AFFORDABLE HOUSING TRUST FUND-----is pushing for these same tax laws today.


What these policies have as goals is two-fold.  First, these policies will force landlords having no room for additional costs to jettison------pushing them out.  Second, our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones filling those cities with NEW PEOPLE-----whether US citizens relocating----our our new to US 99% of citizens ----will NO DOUBT not KNOW what is MOVING FORWARD in Baltimore---staging policy to FLEECE them later.

Baltimore is a massive ghetto because of these DESTABILIZING ECONOMIC POLICIES.  The goals of keeping Baltimore DYNAMIC----marketing for new citizens to city just to fleece them and push them out----is NOT FIXING BALTIMORE.



Baltimore is already breaking TAX UNIFORMITY laws doing just this------creating selective property tax rates RENTAL VS RESIDENTIAL

'Whilst the number of properties
for sale are on the rise, the number of rental properties in the market are expected to begin to fall. This comes from the impact of the government’s anti-landlord tax hikes'.



Tax Hikes Push Landlords out of the Buy to Let Investment Market


Posted By: Resident 19/12/2017


Residential Landlord UK

A growing number of landlords are considering exiting the buy to let investment market as the impact of tax hikes begins to kick in.


New housing predictions from property website Home have considered the impact of policy changes on house prices. A sharp rise in the number of homes for sale in recent months was noted by the site. It was predicted that this trend will continue, placing negative pressure on the housing market as the influx of properties grow.


Whilst the number of properties for sale are on the rise, the number of rental properties in the market are expected to begin to fall. This comes from the impact of the government’s anti-landlord tax hikes. According to Home, the number of new sales grew from 11 per cent across the UK between November 2017 and the same month last year. Meanwhile, the supply of rental properties dropped by 16 per cent. It is expected that these trends will persist into 2018.



London and the South East are expected to be hit the hardest from these issues due to the high cost of investment properties in the area. Property prices in Greater London dropped for the fifth consecutive month in December down 0.3 per cent in comparison to November. In the South East prices declined by 1.4 per cent between November and December. The annual change is now 2.3 per cent, which falls below the England and Wales average of 2.6 per cent.



On a positive note, 2018 looks bright for those selling properties in Yorkshire and the North West. These are the two areas that Home anticipates will become the leading regions for price growth, with hikes of 4.4 per cent and 4.7 per cent respectively. This is likely fueled by the fact that landlords in these areas see some of the highest UK yields.



Home director Doug Shephard said: ‘Any sort of buy to let exit will tip the market to the downside and the UK government should be monitoring the situation very carefully. Why? Because such a risk to the housing market would imperil the banks and the wider national economic interest, especially post-Brexit. If landlords are forced to sell up, all property prices will be driven down, leaving the first-time home owner in negative equity and mortgage liquidity hard to find for the first-time buyer. Surely not something the government would wish upon the housing market in 2018.’

OH, REALLY?????????????????

________________________________________________



We want to make a quick comment on PATRONAGE TOKENISM-------no matter which population group---all any US 99% of WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens---men or women-----we are being made TOKENS----PRETENDING we are PLAYERS ----when the goals will have those global banking 5% freemason/Greek players BIG LOSERS in the end.

Here we see that global banking 1% freemason STAR as an actor being made to appear the WINNER in what is a global investment firm RESIDENTIAL BUILDING-----taking all of our Baltimore sovereignty surrounding that residential development away. There will be no smiling 99% OF BLACK Baltimore citizens -----as well as white or brown.

BOTH THE SOVEREIGNTY ISSUES SURROUNDING OWNERSHIP INSIDE OUR US CITIES LIKE BALTIMORE---AND THOSE SELECTIVE TAXATION POLICIES BREAKING ---TAX UNIFORMITY ----ARE ILLEGAL AND CORRUPT.

Our US elected politicians have a sworn duty to work for the interests of a sovereign BALTIMORE and for those 99% of Baltimore citizens. They KNOW these policies kill BOTH.



We are MAKING AMERICA GREAT again by handing all our US city real estate to global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS----giving billions of dollars in TAX CREDITS to indenture future Baltimore citizens to this DEBT------FAKE SOCIAL BENEFIT FUNDING-----all while 5% players pretend to be WINNERS. We notice that global banking 1% are not placing any TOKEN WOMEN as corporate development property owners .

TIFS HAVE NEVER IN THESE FEW DECADES PRODUCED ANY GOOD FOR THE US CITIES TIED TO THEM ---THEY ARE A COMPLEX FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT DESIGNED TO MAKE SURE ANY PARTNERS IN THESE PROJECTS NOT GLOBAL BANKING 1% ARE GIVEN THE SHAKE.




Use and common downsides

Tax increment financing (TIF) subsidies, which are used for both publicly subsidized economic development and municipal projects, have provided the means for cities and counties to gain approval of redevelopment of blighted properties or public projects such as city halls, parks, libraries etc. The definition of blight has taken on a broad inclusion of nearly every type of land including farmland, which has given rise to much of the criticism. "


To provide the needed subsidy, the urban renewal district, or TIF district, is essentially always drawn around hundreds or thousands of acres of additional real estate (beyond the project site) to provide the needed borrowing capacity for the project or projects. The borrowing capacity is established by committing all normal yearly future real estate tax increases from every parcel in the TIF district (for 20–25 years, or more) along with the anticipated new tax revenue eventually coming from the project or projects themselves. If the projects are public improvements paying no real estate taxes, all of the repayment will come from the adjacent properties within the TIF district.



Although questioned, it is often presumed that even public improvements trigger gains in taxes above what occurs, or would have occurred in the district without the investment. In many jurisdictions yearly property tax increases are restricted and cannot exceed what would otherwise have occurred.

The completion of a public or private project can at times result in an increase in the value of surrounding real estate, which generates additional tax revenue. Sales-tax revenue may also increase, and jobs may be added, although these factors and their multipliers usually do not influence the structure of TIF.



The routine yearly increases district-wide, along with any increase in site value from the public and private investment, generate an increase in tax revenues. This is the "tax increment." Tax increment financing dedicates tax increments within a certain defined district to finance the debt that is issued to pay for the project. TIF was designed to channel funding toward improvements in distressed, underdeveloped, or underutilized parts of a jurisdiction where development might otherwise not occur. TIF creates funding for public or private projects by borrowing against the future increase in these property-tax revenues.


La Cite Real Estate

La Cite Inmobiliaria was established in 1982 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 1993 the company opened its offices in Uruguay and is registered under no. 511 in the Register of the Uruguayan Ministry of Tourism. 18 years after having been established in Uruguay, La Cite Real Estate is now truly a synonym of quality and trust.

Our clients come from Argentina, Brazil, Europe and the United States. We are the only real estate company with offices in Uruguay offering our clients advice in Spanish, German and English as native languages. To serve the increasing amount of clients from northern Europe, La Cite Real Estate has nominated a representative on the exclusive Island of Sylt located in the North Sea in Germany. This new office also gives advice on legal, financial and relocation matters with respect to Uruguay.






Commercial Real Estate

Actor Malik Yoba embraces his latest role — as real life Baltimore developer


By Melody Simmons  – Reporter, Baltimore Business Journal


Aug 20, 2018, 7:30am EDT Updated a day ago




Actor Malik Yoba came to Baltimore last week to check on what he called a role of a lifetime.




Standing at a once forgotten, rough-and-tumble corner in West Baltimore, the star of "New York Undercover," "Empire," "Designated Survivor" and several films looked up to inspect a pair of apartment buildings at the $800 million Center/West development. As an investor in the project with developers Daniel Bythewood Jr. and Ian Arias, Yoba is branching out his successful career from the stage to the street.



"For me, this is mission work," he said of the 262 units that will welcome tenants in early fall.



A portion of the luxury apartments on all floors in the Center/West multi-family project will be affordable for low-income city residents. That was the main attraction to Yoba to be a part of the development that aims to ultimately create an upscale, new urban cache on 32 acres in Poppleton.



"It isn't a local Baltimore story, it's an American story — this is what 'making America great again' is all about. This is people who don't live in a particular community who are coming here saying we want to make this amazing for everybody," he said. Yoba's undisclosed equity in the project will help complete the first phase of the project that has been 14 years in the making.



The Brooklyn-based actor is one of several partners in the deal by New York-based LaCite Development, including the state and city who backed a $58.9 million tax increment financing package in 2015. Last week, Goldman Sachs joined in, investing in Center/West through the purchase of $5 million in tax credits following a recent state revenue bond sale.


All of the factors have helped the project materialize. Located west of Martin Luther King Boulevard at Fayette and Schroeder streets, Center/West is planned to have 1,600 apartments and 3.2 million square feet of residential and commercial space in about a decade.



The second phase, to begin in the coming six months, will hold a "big box retailer and movie theater," Bythewood said. A Starbucks could also soon open near Schroeder and Amity streets adjacent to the decrepit Poe Homes public housing project — an addition that five years ago was unrealistic in a neighborhood with some of the city's highest unemployment rates.
It is that underdog status that has pumped Yoba up.


"I’ve had the opportunity to work as an actor and tell stories that transform," Yoba, 50, said during a tour and interview last week that included selfies with construction workers and Poppleton residents.



"I'm proud to be part of projects that literally change lives. Here, you can't tell where affordable housing is in the building. Everyone has the same Class A finishes and everyone can feel proud. When you go up into these units, you emotionally feel like someone cared about me. Look at the space, the views, the amenities, the fixtures."



Yoba asked local residents and construction workers if they planned to move into Center/West. When they told him they didn't think they could afford a unit in the development, Yoba told them, "yes you can. This is for you, too."


His involvement on Baltimore's development landscape joins other actors including Wendell Pierce, of HBO's "The Wire" who invested in the newly opened 103-unit, $22 million Nelson Kohl apartments in Station North with developer Ernst Valery.



Yoba said he has aspired to be a developer since his days as a youth fascinated with construction sites in the Bronx. He met Bythewood 13 years ago through Bythewood's cousin, a writer for "New York Undercover," and said that he immediately knew he wanted to invest in the Baltimore project because he believed in the grit of the city.



"Baltimore and Detroit — they are solid cities," he said. "This gives people hope. It’s self-esteem building. We live in a world where mental health is real. Emotional health is real, and people feel like no one cares."


Of his tour last week of the Center/West buildings that will hold studio, one, two and three-bedroom units with luxury finishes, Yoba said the reality of it all has finally started to sink in.


"I walked into the space today and had a physiological reaction," he said. "I want to live here. It’s better than my place in New York."


In the coming years, Center/West may get the film treatment, too, as Yoba said he is considering making a documentary on the transformation of the community.
"It’s about a physical entity driven by a philosophy about inclusion," he said. "This has created 400 jobs, new taxes for the city and a vision. I keep asking people who are walking by, do they know about this? Do they know there are people of color building this? Most people don’t know. These are the things we’ve talked about for years. I think the sky is the limit."



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August 21st, 2018

8/21/2018

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We want to take this week to discuss RENTER/LANDLORD public policy here in US and Western nations.  Today in US global banking has staged economic policy having goals of creating huge stress not only on our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE being pushed to third world poverty trying to maintain home-ownership or at least the ability to RENT an apartment----but also the goal of global banking to get rid of US landlords having been building owners these few decades.  Rebuilding our US cities as FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES means getting rid of long-term rental property owners as well as privatizing all US public housing real estate.  Remember, MOVING FORWARD US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones have city-dwellers being hit with a crushing amount of sovereign debt whether Federal, state, or local treasury bond debt maximized by super-duper global corporate tax credits.  Global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS need people living in cities as high-income able to pay all building and operational costs of GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES.

Here in Baltimore, our home-owners and landlords have already been saddled with the highest of property taxes and fees----and if we continue to MOVE FORWARD those 5% players thinking they are WINNERS because they are temporarily being paid a six-figure income will see all that income taken to pay sovereign debt.

OLD US CITY LANDLORDS BEING MOVED OUT MAKING WAY FOR A HIGHER-INCOME BUILDING OWNER WHO WILL BE SOAKED OF ALL PROFIT-MARGIN TRYING TO MEET SOARING BALTIMORE CITY DEBT COSTS.

BALTIMORE is ranked 4th highest as all these US cities below fall into MOVING FORWARD mid-size city development into FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.

While global banking 1% are raising these revenue costs to push out existing US 99% of citizens black, white, and brown citizens---it is also putting into place a tax burden so heavy for those 'new' upper-middle/merely rich that they will have no disposable income. Please disregard the UNEMPLOYMENT stats in this article---FAKE DATA.


Top 10 cities with the highest tax rates
Thomas C. Frohlich and Alexander E.M. Hess, 24/7 Wall St. Published 8:30 a.m. ET Feb. 16, 2014 | Updated 12:20 p.m. ET Feb. 17, 2014



New federal report reviews property, sales, auto and income taxes for various income levels in largest city in each state.(Photo: Ned Gerard, AP)
Story Highlights
  • Bridgeport, Conn., is at the high end; Cheyenne, Wyo., is at the low end
  • Seven of the cities with the highest tax burdens had among the highest property taxes
  • Each year, the federal government reviews tax burdens in largest city in every state in USA

Although a little late this year, due largely to the federal government's 17-day shutdown in 2013, tax season is here. And, according to a new report, what you owe in taxes could be largely determined by where you live.


The report, released by the Office of Revenue Analysis of the government of the District of Columbia, reviewed the estimated property, sales, auto and income taxes for a hypothetical family at various income levels in 2012 in the largest city within each state. City tax burdens vary widely. A family of three earning $75,000 in Cheyenne, Wyo., paid just $3,475, or 4.6% of its income, in state and local taxes. In Bridgeport, Conn., a family of three earning $75,000 paid $16,333, or 21.8% of its income — a total that does not even include federal taxes.




Not surprisingly, tax rates influence overall tax burdens significantly. This is especially true for property taxes. Seven of the cities with the highest tax burdens also had among the 10-highest property tax rates, according to the Office of Revenue Analysis. Homeowners in Columbus, Ohio, which had the fifth-highest tax burden in the nation, paid an effective rate of $3.57 for every $100 in home value, the highest such rate in the U.S.




Lori Metcalf, fiscal analyst at the Office of Revenue Analysis, noted in an interview with 24/7 Wall St. that property taxes tended to comprise a higher share of state and local tax burdens. Because of this, "the trend that you see in the property tax should be reflected in the overall burden."



Another tax that is often important in determining overall tax burden is the income tax. This is especially true for cities with the lowest tax burdens, seven of which are located in states that do not have an income tax. Only one of the five cities with the lowest tax burdens, Billings, Mont., is not located in a state that has no income tax.




Yet the relationship between income taxes and higher tax burdens is not as straightforward. To highlight this, Metcalf noted that higher incomes families usually live in higher-value homes. "This means that when you pay income taxes you'll have a larger deduction because you'll have a larger property tax based on a more expensive home and a larger mortgage interest deduction," Metcalf explained. As a result of this deduction, homeowners' income tax burdens are often reduced, obscuring the relationship between income taxes and overall tax burdens.




Several factors not reviewed by the Office of Revenue Analysis, whose study focused primarily on the characteristics of tax systems, may play a role in determining tax burdens. One such potential factor is unemployment. In many cities with low tax burdens, the unemployment rate was also very low. Sioux Falls, S.D., and Billings, Mont., had among the lowest unemployment rates in the nation in 2012. At the other end of the spectrum, Detroit, Mich., and Providence, R.I., had both hefty tax burdens and high unemployment.




A number of the cities with the lowest tax burdens were located in states that are considerably less densely populated, such as Alaska, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Even some of the cities themselves are in less densely populated metro areas. Birmingham, Ala., had one of the lowest tax burdens in the U.S. and was located in the the least densely populated metro area of any reviewed. By comparison, many of the cities with high tax burdens are located in more densely populated parts of the country, such as the Northeast.




While this falls outside the scope of the report, it is possible that the reason areas with low population density have lower tax burdens is because the cost of running these cities is less. Local governments with fewer residents can spend less on government services. As a result, the government does not have to make as much in taxes.




Several low tax burden cities were also located in states that had a relative abundance of fossil fuels, including oil, natural gas, and coal. Houston, Tex., is located in the nation's top state for oil and natural gas production. Cheyenne is the largest city in Wyoming, which accounts for a large portion of the nation's coal output. A 2012 study by the National Conference of State Legislators found that Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming, all of which have cities with low tax burdens, relied on taxing oil and gas activity for much of their revenue.




Based on the Office of Revenue Analysis' report: "Tax Rates and Tax Burdens in the District of Columbia — A Nationwide Comparison," 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the cities where a hypothetical family of three in different income brackets had the highest and the lowest combined tax burdens. To calculate tax burden, the report identified four different types of taxes: income, property, automobile, and sales. The report examined tax systems in the largest city in each state, as well as in Washington, D.C. All estimates are for the 2012 fiscal year. Median housing value and median income data used by the report to determine property value are for metro areas. When two cities were located within the same metro area, county level data was used. 24/7 Wall St. also reviewed income figures for these areas from the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as area unemployment rates as of 2012 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

These are the cities with the highest taxes:


10. Wilmington, Del.
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,296 (2nd lowest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $20,332 (9th highest)
• Unemployment rate: 8.6%



Delaware is one of only five states in the U.S. that does not impose a sales tax. The state, including Wilmington, however, makes up for the lack of sales tax in other ways, such as property taxes. A hypothetical family of three earning $150,000 paid $14,701 in property taxes in 2012, more than most cities reviewed. The high property tax burden in Wilmington is likely the result of high property values, rather than taxes, in the city as of 2012. A family of three earning $150,000 that year was assumed to live in a home valued at $831,784, more expensive than in all but three other large cities. In fact, local properties were taxed $1.77 per $100 of property value, on par with much of the country.




9. Detroit, Mich.
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,421 (18th highest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $19,145 (12th highest)
• Unemployment rate: 10.5%




Detroit taxpayers faced a particularly high income tax burden. A hypothetical family of three earning just $25,000 in 2012 paid $446 in state and local income taxes, or 1.8% of its income, more than residents of all but a few other cities. Likely causing this high tax burden on lower-income families is the flat income tax rates both the state of Michigan and Detroit have, while a majority states have increasing tax rates for higher income levels. Additionally, few cities had higher property taxes than Detroit, where the effective tax rate was almost 3%. Property tax burdens would likely be higher if area homes were more valuable. However, Detroit's home were among the least valuable in the nation.





8. Louisville, Ky.
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,118 (23rd lowest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $20,524 (8th highest)
• Unemployment rate: 8.3%




Kentucky uses a graduated income tax system, where residents earning higher incomes paid higher incomes taxes. Local tax rates, however, did not rise with income. Income tax burdens on a hypothetical families earning $25,000 annually were among the highest compared with other large American cities. Property tax burdens were also among the highest in the nation for families in most tax brackets that year. On the other hand, state gas taxes were relatively low, at just 16.4 cents per gallon, less than in the vast majority of cities considered. Tax revenue should also increase if the city's population continues to grow. Louisville's population more than doubled — growing by more than 136% — in the 10 years prior to 2012.





7. Portland, Maine
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,788 (12th lowest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $22,463 (5th highest)
• Unemployment rate: 5.9%




Taxes in Portland are actually quite favorable to lower-income residents. A family of three earning $25,000 had no income tax burden and paid just $568 in the state sales taxes. At the other end of the spectrum, however, wealthier families faced especially high tax burdens. A hypothetical family earning $150,000 spent $22,463, or 15%, of their income on state and local taxes. In 2011, Governor Paul LePage lowered the state's' highest income tax rate and eliminated state income taxes for many low-income Mainers. Maine indexes both its tax brackets and tax exemption for inflation in order to account for price changes. However, higher than average property and gas tax burdens drive up tax burdens for Portland residents. Despite the recent tax reforms, the tax burdens of Portland residents remained relatively high due to high tax burdens on real estate and cars.






6. Providence, R.I.
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,381 (21st highest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $21,294 (7th highest)
• Unemployment rate: 10.3%




Providence's unemployment rate was 10.3% in 2012, third worst out of all cities reviewed. Families of three earning lower incomes can receive a state earned income tax credit. For those families earning $25,000 per year, the income tax burden in Providence was negative. Providence families paid more in automobile taxes and fees than their counterparts in any other large city reviewed. Rhode Island residents were taxed more than 30 cents by the state per gallon of gas in 2012, ninth-highest of any city.






5. Columbus, Ohio
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,953 (17th lowest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $22,333 (6th highest)
• Unemployment rate: 6.1%






A family of three earning $25,000 a year in Columbus faced only an 11.8% tax burden, lower than more than half of all cities reviewed. However, tax burdens for families with higher earnings were among the highest in the nation. This is due in large part to the city's real estate taxes. Although the housing values in the city were not especially high, lower than the average for cities reviewed, residents faced especially high property taxes. At 3.57%, Columbus had the highest effective property tax rate of any city.





4. Baltimore, Md.
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,950 (16th lowest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $24,747 (4th highest)
• Unemployment rate: 7.2%




Baltimore area residents are fairly well-off compared with most of the country — median household income was nearly $67,000 in 2012, among the nation's highest. Baltimore's property tax burden is especially high. Families of three earning $150,000 paid $13,772 in property taxes in 2012. Families earning $25,000 had no income tax burden, but those earning $150,000 paid more than 5% of their income in state and local income taxes alone, the sixth-highest percentage of any city reviewed.





3. Milwaukee, Wisc.
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,245 (26th highest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $26,296 (2nd highest)
• Unemployment rate: 7.4%




Like a number of other cities with high tax load, Milwaukee residents faced especially high property tax burdens. The effective property tax rate in the city was 3%, higher than all but a few regions reviewed. Also driving up taxes were the especially high income tax burdens in the city. The state used a graduated income tax system, meaning tax rates are higher for families that earn more, although Milwaukee had no local income taxes.In 2013, the state reformed its tax code, lowering the highest rate as well as the number of overall tax brackets. Governor Scott Walker recently pushed the state assembly to cut both property taxes and and the income tax rate for the state's lowest tax bracket.





2. Philadelphia, Pa.
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $3,794 (7th highest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $25,317 (3rd highest)
• Unemployment rate: 8.6%





Philadelphia's poorer families were subject to a much higher tax burden than those in most other large cities. A family of three earning $25,000 in 2012 paid $788 in income taxes that year, more than all but one other large city. The city's property tax burden was also considerably high for most income levels that year. A family whose earnings fell into the $100,000 tax bracket, for example, paid more than $11,806 in property taxes in 2012, second-most among large cities. After a new property tax valuation system was implemented and some residents' tax assessments more than tripled, the city introduced a "gentrification relief program" at the end of 2013. Fuel was also heavily taxed in 2012, with gasoline costing an additional 31 cents per gallon due to state taxes, which were among the highest in the U.S.





1. Bridgeport, Conn.
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $4,001 (4th highest)
• Taxes for family earning $150,000: $33,208 (the highest)
• Unemployment rate: 7.8%





No large U.S. city had a higher tax burden than Bridgeport, where a family of three earning $150,000 a year paid more than 22% of its income in state and local taxes. However, the metro area, which includes affluent Fairfield County, is wealthier than much of the U.S. and was used to calculate home values and property burdens by the Office of Revenue Analysis. More than 20% of households had an annual income of at least $200,000, more than any other metro area reviewed. The city's high tax burden was due in large part to property taxes, as the area had both high home values and high effective property tax rates. Also propelling the city to the top of the list were Connecticut's relatively high income tax burden of 5.2% on families earning $150,000 per year as well a high tax burden for car owners.
_________________



With the US FED global banking mortgage loan frauds coming to an end the method of finding homes for our poor citizens---professional unqualified home owner -----will soon be ending.  This criminal housing structure has been the largest source of housing for our US 99% low-income these few decades.  At the same time mortgage fraud and house-flipping frauds come to an end so too is our safety nets for housing----as PUBLIC HOUSING, SECTION 8, homeless shelters et al.  Another revenue benefit for low-income EARNED TAX CREDITS taking tax burden for poor often to being a tax refund----has CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ending all tax protection for our US poor.

Indeed, Baltimore has been ranked in mid-range for those tax credits as our city is one big ghetto having a tremendous percentage of low-income and poor citizens.


'4. Baltimore, Md.
• Taxes for family earning $25,000: $2,950 (16th lowest)'



Obama era neo-liberals already passed taxation increases on poor by requiring tax savings accounts tied to global banking.....requiring health savings accounts tied to global banking---both of which our poor will never see.  All this is far-right wing global banking ending all Federal programs tied to housing security.

Below we see what will be MOVING FORWARD in US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES as UK is a decade or so ahead of ONE WORLD third world Western nations.
To PRETEND global banking pols are privatizing all these social benefits away supported by the next FAKE outsourcing scheme-----they are calling this scheme UNIVERSAL CREDIT----much the same as the other FAKE social benefit scheme -----BASIC INCOME both of which are being found to fail of course in UK.


Universal Credit is a social security benefit in the United Kingdom introduced in 2013 to replace six means-tested benefits and tax credits: income based Jobseeker's Allowance, Housing Benefit, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, income based Employment and Support Allowance and Income Support.[1][n 1]

It was announced by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith at the Conservative Party annual conference in 2010 stated as designed to bring "fairness and simplicity" to the British system of social security.[2] It was one of several wide-ranging welfare reforms introduced by the 2010–2015 Coalition Government in the Welfare Reform Act 2012.



It replaces six existing means-tested benefits:
  • Income Support
  • Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance
  • Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
  • Housing Benefit
  • Child Tax Credit
  • Working Tax Credit

____________________________________________

Obama-era set the stage for ending all those Federal safety net programs with the $20 trillion national debt-----tax reforms during OBAMA killed unemployment benefits----housing benefits-----working tax credit------the CHILD CREDIT was hit hard with goal of ending all of the above.  Remember, far-right wing Obama/Clinton neo-liberals disguised the ending of Child Credit for our low-income by using terms like EXPANDED CHILD TAX CREDIT----raising this tax benefit for higher-income families TEMPORARILY.

We want to look at public policy in UK on this public policy issue first because US follows close behind.

What we see as UNIVERSAL CREDIT is the far-right wing turning what was a public safety net assuring low-income housing of some sort------and making it what everyone already KNEW would become PAY-DAY LOAN DEBT this aimed at citizens trying to stay housed as RENTERS once all public assistance was discontinued.



'If people take an “advance payment”, it could mean receiving less than a basic subsistence payment for the whole year, while they pay back the advance'.

As we read this article we see not only our 99% of low-income citizens pushed to these plans ending more in debt staying too long in a rental apartment ----but, those landlords handling our lower-income citizens were taken out being forced to allow this ridiculous scheme of months of unpaid monthly rent global banking pols PRETENDED to those landlords would follow strong OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY ----OH, REALLY???



Obviously, those landlords hit earliest will be those SECTION 8 -----slum landlords of course no one wants but allowed to be major low-income housing sources.


Universal credit changes won't help anyone feel more secure about renting



Giles Peaker

Government changes to the controversial benefit are a sticking plaster, rather than an answer to the problems of rent arrears and evictions


Wed 29 Nov 2017 02.23 EST Last modified on Fri 22 Jun 2018 08.12 EDT

Philip Hammond’s budget made some changes to universal credit, but not enough to allay fears for landlords and tenants. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters


Pressure has been building for months on the government over the continued rollout of universal credit. Significant problems have been reported over claimants not being paid for the first week of a claim and the six-week delay they face before getting any money.
Social landlords in pilot areas reported rocketing rent arrears, including for tenants who had never been in arrears before. Private landlords took fright, with surveys showing that less than 20% would accept prospective tenants on universal credit.



A stark illustration of the level of concern was the Grimsby landlord who sent section 21 notices to all its tenants ahead of the introduction of universal credit in the area. These notices meant that the landlord could begin possession proceedings immediately, after the two-month notice period, with no need to give any reason for eviction.



As the letter to the tenants made clear, this was done to try to ensure rent was paid, even during the six-week period when the tenant would be receiving no money. The tactic was harsh, but for any landlord six weeks of rent arrears is a massive burden.

The government has now conceded, in Philip Hammond’s budget and with further detail from work and pensions minister David Gauke, that there are problems with the benefit and has made changes including:
  • Scrapping the week without any payment, from next February, reducing the waiting period to five weeks.
  • Increasing, from January, the potential “advance payment” [actually, a loan] from 50% to 100% of the first month and allowing repayment of this advance over 12 rather than six.
  • Paying existing housing benefit claimants a further two weeks of housing benefit after the start of a universal credit claim.

These steps may go some way to calming landlords, but how far they will be effective is open to question. And there is no detail yet on one of the most important aspects for landlords, which is arranging to receive rent payments directly. This is the single most needed step to help secure tenants.


Few people will have existing housing benefit claims when moving to universal credit, at least during the rollout period, so this concession is unlikely to be of great benefit.


And the so-called “advance payment” will have to be requested by claimants. Previously, the provision of information to claimants about advance payments has been dreadful. It remains to be seen whether this improves.


If people take an “advance payment”, it could mean receiving less than a basic subsistence payment for the whole year, while they pay back the advance. This will again mean people are likely to stack up debt and rent arrears. The only difference will be that instead of an initial hit of arrears, they will be spread out over the year.


The changes that the government have made are a sticking plaster on the real problems that universal credit presents for people in getting and keeping tenancies. Better than nothing, but still with lasting problems.

______________________________________________




Let's think who over these few decades have relied on UNEMPLOYMENT benefits to among other things to keep unemployed workers in their homes---whether as owners or renters.  Quite a number of our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE losing jobs as corporations went overseas----as global banking neo-liberal BOOM AND BUST systemic banking frauds drove businesses and workers out of the economy---and MOVING FORWARD economic collapse with growing loss of employment industries will see this decade or two ----99% of US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES having stress in paying rental/home-owner premiums.


'Universal credit staff:


'It was more about getting them off the phone'


Whistleblowers tell of the ‘heartbreaking’ impact flawed system has on claimants


  • Universal credit IT system ‘broken’, whistleblowers say'

As everyone knew in UK before any of these UNIVERSAL CREDIT schemes started-----the entire system was corrupt with renters receiving subprimed rental loans and more and  more landlords pushed to bankruptcy forced to wait months before evictions.

Remember, the far-right wing global banking whether Clinton neo-liberals or Bush neo-cons do NOT install any REAL LEFT SOCIAL BENEFIT policy ---they simply PRETEND these policies help the poor. 

While THE GUARDIAN says this was an unsuccessful scheme----they are LYING AND HIDING----because the goals were always to soak the poor in further debt---and to bankrupt UK landlords.




Quick guide
What is universal credit and what are the problems?


What is universal credit?

Universal credit (UC) is the supposed flagship reform of the benefits system, rolling together six benefits (including unemployment and benefits, and tax credits) into one, online-only system. The theoretical aim, for which there was general support across the political spectrum, was to simplify the system and increase the incentives for people to move off benefits into work.



How long has it been around?

The project was legislated for in 2011 under the auspices of its most vocal champion, Iain Duncan Smith. The plan was to roll it out by 2017. However, a series of management failures, expensive IT blunders and design faults  means it is six years behind schedule and rollout will not be complete until 2023.

What is the biggest problem?

The original design set out  a minimum 42-day wait for a first payment to claimants when they moved to UC (in practice this is often up to 60 days). After sustained pressure, the government announced in the autumn 2017 budget that the wait would be reduced to 35 days from February 2018. This will partially mitigate the impact on many claimants of having no income for six weeks. The wait has led to rent arrears and evictions, hunger (food banks in UC areas report notable increases in referrals), use of expensive credit and mental distress. 



Ministers have expanded the availability of hardship loans (now repayable over a year) to help new claimants while they wait for payment. Housing benefit will now continue for an extra two weeks after the start of a UC claim. However, critics say the five-week wait is still too long and want it reduced to two or three weeks.

Are there other problems?


Plenty.  Multibillion-pound cuts to work allowances imposed by the former chancellor George Osborne mean UC is far less generous than originally envisaged. According to the Resolution Foundation thinktank, about 2.5m low-income working households will be more than £1,000 a year worse off when they move to UC, reducing work incentives.




Landlords are worried that the level of rent arrears accrued by tenants on UC could lead to a rise in evictions. It's also not very user-friendly: claimants complain the system is complex, unreliable and difficult to manage, particularly if you have no internet access.



And there is concern that UC cannot deliver key promises: a critical study found it does not deliver savings, cannot prove it gets more people into work, and has plunged vulnerable claimants into hardship.

Was this helpful?

A stark illustration of the level of concern was the Grimsby landlord who sent section 21 notices to all its tenants ahead of the introduction of universal credit in the area. These notices meant that the landlord could begin possession proceedings immediately, after the two-month notice period, with no need to give any reason for eviction.



As the letter to the tenants made clear, this was done to try to ensure rent was paid, even during the six-week period when the tenant would be receiving no money. The tactic was harsh, but for any landlord six weeks of rent arrears is a massive burden.

The government has now conceded, in Philip Hammond’s budget and with further detail from work and pensions minister David Gauke, that there are problems with the benefit and has made changes including:




  • Scrapping the week without any payment, from next February, reducing the waiting period to five weeks.
  • Increasing, from January, the potential “advance payment” [actually, a loan] from 50% to 100% of the first month and allowing repayment of this advance over 12 rather than six.
  • Paying existing housing benefit claimants a further two weeks of housing benefit after the start of a universal credit claim.

These steps may go some way to calming landlords, but how far they will be effective is open to question. And there is no detail yet on one of the most important aspects for landlords, which is arranging to receive rent payments directly. This is the single most needed step to help secure tenants.





Few people will have existing housing benefit claims when moving to universal credit, at least during the rollout period, so this concession is unlikely to be of great benefit.



And the so-called “advance payment” will have to be requested by claimants. Previously, the provision of information to claimants about advance payments has been dreadful. It remains to be seen whether this improves.



If people take an “advance payment”, it could mean receiving less than a basic subsistence payment for the whole year, while they pay back the advance. This will again mean people are likely to stack up debt and rent arrears. The only difference will be that instead of an initial hit of arrears, they will be spread out over the year.



The changes that the government have made are a sticking plaster on the real problems that universal credit presents for people in getting and keeping tenancies. Better than nothing, but still with lasting problems.


______________________________________________


Our baby boomers are the largest US sector having invested in rental buildings looking for safe real estate investments and expecting to use rental income to supplement their retirements.  We have watched as baby boomers have allowed global banking 5% pols and players steal every retirement venue set aside-----well, universal credit in UK as will happen in US hits those seniors as landlords almost as hard as those Section 8 and slum landlords.  

Below we see US marketing and advertising along with global banking financial management corporations having already moved many of our US seniors managing to remain WINNERS these few decades----into these LANDLORD RETIREMENT SUPPLEMENT schemes.  Remember, the US is about a decade or so behind UK-----so today in US financial planners are staging our US 99% of WE THE SENIORS to be those landlords hit by the same UNIVERSAL CREDIT scheme MOVING FORWARD right now in US Congress.

We have our US baby boomers aged 70-80 aging out of these landlord real estate as retirements hopefully safe for this coming decade.  It will be those age brackets 50-60s being hit hard. 


There is nothing global banking CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and their 5% pols and players hate most then a senior keeping their wealth.

Seniors cash in as landlords



11 Apr 2014




As the cost of living continues to rise and eat into retirement savings, senior citizens in many of SA’s established suburbs are unlocking some of the value in their large family homes not by selling them, but by renting them out, and then becoming tenants themselves in smaller, easier-to-manage properties.


This is according to Harcourts Real Estate's Richard Gray, who says this emerging trend makes good sense for older homeowners whose own families are grown up and who want to scale down anyway because of security or home maintenance issues, or perhaps because they want to enhance their retirement savings.




“Such owners typically have a small mortgage or no mortgage to pay any more and can achieve substantial rentals for their three and four bedroom family homes in sought-after, central areas, especially in the current phase of the market where rental demand is strong and rising.”




They get to keep their real estate assets and if they’re lucky, he says, they may even have a granny flat or cottage on their property where they can stay for ‘free’ while earning rental income on the main dwelling.




“Alternatively, they generally target rental apartments and townhouses in secure complexes, where the maintenance is taken care of and they can lock-up-and-go as they please. And the rentals they pay for these units are usually more than covered by the rentals they are receiving for their own properties, leaving them extra money to live on or to put into their savings if they are still working.”




This is just another illustration, says Gray, of how homeownership can help to create wealth and provide consumers with advantageous financial options throughout life.




“Indeed, the fact that many baby-boomers can now describe themselves as being ‘freetirees’ who are able to do what they want with their lives is largely due to the fact that they became homeowners early in life and worked hard to pay off their bonds as soon as possible.”




Meanwhile, the new trend is also advantageous for young families who are desperately keen to live in established suburbs with good schools, shops, entertainment, sport facilities and public transport all right on their doorstep - but can seldom afford to buy a family home in these areas.



“Renting in a central suburb and saving time and money on transport gives them a much better chance of saving a deposit to buy a home of their own in due course.”

____________________________________________

We have discussed in detail BASIC INCOME as that same UK UNIVERSAL CREDIT------both having goals of ending all Western nation social safety nets including around housing-----rental supplements.  We will simply remind this week how both these programs are FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL BANKING----having no left social progressive benefit goal.  In UK--------UNIVERSAL CREDIT was pushed by global banking pols running as far-right wing Conservatives------while in UK BASIC INCOME is pushed by FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT LABOUR PARTY pretending to be left MARXISTS.  We see in UK both political wings pushing these same policy goals of ending social safety nets with schemes pretending to help the poor while killing both landlords and our 99% WE THE RENTERS.

Here in US Congress is doing the same thing.  Far-right wing Bush neo-cons playing the same game with policy looking like UNIVERSAL CREDIT-----while Clinton/Obama neo-liberals morphing to far-right wing ONE WORLD LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS are pushing BASIC INCOME.

Our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE need to think about how MOVING FORWARD all US 99% of citizens black, white, and brown citizens will BE those needing a safety net surrounding HOUSING---RENTING.


Those right wing voters thinking the end of Section 8 and public housing is WINNING----are often those RENTERS----and often those SENIORS as landlords.


June 9, 2016

“Universal Basic Income” is Just a Negative Income Tax with a Leaky Bucket
by Samuel Hammond



The idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) is for the government to transfer a lump sum to every individual or household, regardless of how much they earn on their own. As Matt Yglesias recently described it, it’s essentially a plan to make social security universal. Proponents argue a Basic Income will raise workers’ bargaining power, reduce poverty, and provide subsistence after robots take our jobs, all while condensing the current potpourri of welfare programs down to a single check in the mail.



Fantastic. The only problem is that, as it’s currently being discussed, UBI comes across as expensive. Very expensive.
The representative proposal is $10,000 per person per year. That implies an over $3 trillion dollar price tag. Writing in the New York Times, Eduardo Porter points out that, even if cut in half to $5,000, a UBI would still cost “as much as the entire federal budget except for Social Security, Medicare, defense and interest payments.”




Cost estimates like this are damning to the UBI cause, and hurt its potential of ever being enacted. Switzerland just rejected a UBI proposal in a landslide referendum, largely because of confusion over how it would be funded.




But this doesn’t have to be the case. The reason is a constant source of frustration for economists trying to assess transfer programs of all types. Namely, universal transfer programs like a Basic Income cannot be analyzed outside of the tax system that pays for it.




Taxes and transfers are two sides of the same coin. You might as well call taxes negative transfers, so to propose a lump sum transfer like UBI without an explicit discussion of how it’s financed only tells half the story. On Twitter, the economist Nick Rowe was a bit more blunt.


Indeed, adding in the tax system is necessary for conceptual clarity. And one of the first things it clarifies is how every working UBI proposal is really, at heart, a Negative Income Tax (NIT) proposal in disguise.
_____________________________________________

Here in Baltimore all real estate development including HOUSING/RESIDENTIAL must be handed to global investment firms from NY---OR BOSTON ------because we wouldn't want our 99% of Baltimore citizens dealing with locally-owned real estate development. 



'On Wednesday, the city's Board of Estimates approved the sale of 149 properties in Druid Heights and Upton to the Boston-based nonprofit The Community Builders'.

Everyone asks----why would we have a GLOBAL BANKING 1% NON-PROFIT as a mixed-income housing developer?  Couldn't be PUBLIC----not yet PRIVATE------the answer is just the same as the FAKE WRAP-AROUND SCHOOL SERVICES policies----it is taken to global banking NGO first to end the status of PUBLIC HOUSING----then it will be that predatory global corporate landlord raising rents too high for most of those citizens falling under-----MIXED into these UNIVERSAL CREDIT SCHEMES becoming RENTAL DEBT.

COMMUNITY BUILDERS is simply a global financial corporation being allowed a NON-PROFIT status to qualify for SOCIAL BENEFIT FUNDING and TAX BREAKS.


While individual landlords and those renting struggle to survive MOVING FORWARD UNIVERSAL CREDIT/BASIC INCOME replacing safety net programs especially around HOUSING/RENTING-----these global development corporations like COMMUNITY BUILDERS will be sucking those US 99% trying to stay in a US city deemed Foreign Economic Zone into RENTAL DEBT.

Don't forget, US cities like Baltimore lost trillions of dollars in subprime mortgage loan frauds-----enterprise zone development frauds----that would pay for ALL housing needs for MIXED INCOME as well as PUBLIC HOUSING. This is BALTIMORE CITY COUNCIL and BALTIMORE MAYOR PUGH staging these landlord/renter structures preparing for UK-style PAYDAY RENTER policies.


Poor Baltimore, not able to have one sovereign housing development anywhere.



Commercial Real Estate

Mixed-income project to replace public housing in Druid Heights



A developer plans to replace the 203-unit Pedestal Gardens at 325 McMechen St. with high quality, mixed-income housing.


CoStar Group Inc.


By Emily Bregel  –  Reporter, Baltimore Business Journal
Aug 19, 2015, 11:39am




A nonprofit's plan to redevelop 149 properties, most of which are vacant lots and distressed public housing in West Baltimore, is moving forward.



On Wednesday, the city's Board of Estimates approved the sale of 149 properties in Druid Heights and Upton to the Boston-based nonprofit The Community Builders. The sale price was $149, or $1 per property, because the developer's investment will help eliminate blight, promote economic development by generating tax income and improve the surrounding community, according to the request from the Department of Housing and Community Development.



The Community Builders owns, operates and manages 10,000 apartments, including Pedestal Gardens public housing in Druid Heights. The nonprofit has completed 320 housing projects in 15 states.




The developer plans to replace the 203-unit Pedestal Gardens and the 149 properties with high quality, mixed-income housing. The project will create 90 new mixed-income rental townhouses and apartments. The four blocks that comprise Pedestal Gardens will be redeveloped over the course of five years, replacing the aging buildings with upgraded properties "that better reflect the architectural charm of Eutaw Place and Madison Street," the proposal said.



The Community Builders will provide 40 off-site housing units for residents currently living in Pedestal Gardens.

________________________________________________

'There's been much hype and commotion since the federal government rolled out its revamped Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) last month. Dubbed 'Christmas in July', the change distributed nearly $3 billion to Canadian families, regardless of income, with children aged 17 and under'.

Whenever global banking pols and media use terms like 'Christmas in July' in describing any tax policy-----our 99% WE THE PEOPLE are about to be sucker-punched.  Obama era did the same as we see here in Canada----both US and Canada MOVING FORWARD as fast as they can what UK has already installed a decade or so ago.

BALTIMORE IS SO POOR IT CAN'T EVEN AFFORD A SOVEREIGN HOUSING/RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT------we discuss this MOVING FORWARD as a sovereignty issue because when global financial real estate corporations own all US city downtown/uptown housing development our local 99% of citizens will have NO local control over public policy tied to 5Ws who, when, where, why, what of how those residential housing complexes work----no US Federal housing opportunity access---no US landlord/tenet laws.  As well, when Baltimore allows global investment firms own all residential housing----those global corporations having billions of dollars in capital can raise rental rates forcing RENTER DEBT DEFAULTS for months without financial stress----while our local landlords bite the dust.

CHILD CARE/CHILD TAX CREDIT are tax policy enfolded into all of what has been EARNED INCOME TAX CREDITS------low-income citizens able to use tax breaks for tax returns.  Here we see a middle-income family receiving CHRISTMAS IN JULY Child Tax Credits----they being targeted as Baltimore's source for massive global corporate campus sovereign debt.  

99% WE THE PEOPLE LOOKING AT CHILD TAX CREDIT while PROPERTY TAXES, FEES, FINES---PAYDAY RENTER DEBT structures are being installed.


There are no CHILD CARE benefits in ONE WORLD FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----including US ZONES.



THE BLOG
08/26/2015 08:19 EDT | Updated 08/26/2016 05:59 EDT



How Canada's Revamped Universal Child Care Benefit Affect You


There's been much hype and commotion since the federal government rolled out its revamped Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) last month. Dubbed 'Christmas in July', the change distributed nearly $3 billion to Canadian families, regardless of income, with children aged 17 and under.


The most significant aspect of the change is the shift away from tax credit (a fixed amount for any tax paying Canadian), to an increased taxable benefit, (an amount that is now taxed at an individuals marginal tax rate). While the move continues to stir debate over its potential political motives, most Canadian parents are aligned by one question: "how much is the net benefit to me after the taxes are paid?"


To help clear up some of the uncertainty, here is a quick outline describing the change and examples on how it will ultimately impact Canadian families.


What Changed

Prior to the restructure, the UCCB gave a $100/month taxable benefit to parents for each child under the age of six. The former structure also allowed parents a $2,255 annual non-refundable federal tax credit per household to be claimed for each child under 18.



Under the revamped UCCB, the $2,255 credit has been replaced with two separate taxable benefits. 1) A $160/month taxable benefit for children under six and 2) a new $60/month taxable benefit for children over six. First time payments are retroactive to January 1, 2015 resulting in a one-time top up of $520 for each child under six and $420 for each child aged six to 17 before the new standard monthly rates are issued.
The Confusion

Due to the complexity of Canadian taxes, often what initially looks like a benefit may actually prove itself a tax burden upon the completion of a full tax-cycle. So while most Canadians have reacted positively to the change, it has also stirred up many questions regarding long-term tax implications.


This uncertainty, plus media reporting that continues to illustrate the UCCB's impact in aggregated taxpayer values, has created quite the confusing scenario for families keen to understand the change.

Tax Credits vs. Tax Deductions - Understanding the Difference

One of the main culprits of confusion in the UCCB reshuffle is the shift from a tax credit to a taxable benefit structure.

Essentially, a tax credit is a 15 per cent deduction in taxes owing calculated using the lowest tax bracket values*. A tax deduction on the other hand is a reduction in your taxable income calculated on your marginal tax rate and often provides more value than a credit.

REMEMBER, A CITIZEN HAS TO MEET AN INCOME LEVEL TO EVEN FILE DEDUCTIONS.  THIS IS WHY A SUPER-MAJORITY OF US AND CANADIAN CITIZENS WILL NOT QUALIFY.



Here's a breakdown of the Canadian federal tax brackets (2014) as a reference:


Under $43,953 = 15 per cent*
Over $43,953 and under $87,907 = 22 per cent
Over $87,907 and under $136,270 = 26 per cent
Over $136,270 = 29 per cent


In addition to this each province has their own set of tax brackets which vary from province to province. If you want to see which federal and provincial tax brackets you are in, you can use our Canadian tax calculator to figure it out. Generally, the lowest tax federal + provincial tax brackets are around 20 per cent and the highest around 45 per cent.

How the Change Affects You


How does the new UCCB change affect you and your specific tax bracket?

Let's take a look at three different possible tax scenarios. The lowest marginal tax rate in Canada of 20 per cent, a moderate rate of 35 per cent and a high rate of 45 per cent. We also add in someone earning no income though this won't be very typical.


We can see the average monthly increase in benefits ranges from about $5 to $20 depending on income. Additionally, in the case of someone whose income is low enough to not pay tax they get the full benefit of $60 because they were not able to take advantage the tax credit before. On face value this may seem to benefit couples where one person doesn't work, the new income splitting rules make this scenario unlikely.


An Added Bonus for Single Parents


The UCCB restructure works out very well in the favour of single parents. As a single parent you not only get to keep the old child tax credit, but can also attribute the UCCB income to your child. Essentially, this means you can maximize the credit without having to pay tax on the benefit (assuming your child earns no other income).


Overall the new UCCB are a net benefit to all Canadian parents with children in the applicable age brackets, but the increase, after taxes and the loss of old benefits, is far less than the apparent increase of $60/mo. The actual monthly change in benefits may be as little as $4 but more typically it will be around $10-15 for a middle class family.


Even for couples where one parent remains at home and earns no income the results will be similar. The new income splitting rules mean that even a stay-at-home parent is likely to have a taxable income.


The one major exception, as mentioned, is single parents. Single parents gain from multiple benefits. First, they get to keep the old tax credit. Second, they can assign the taxable income from the new benefit to their child, likely receiving it tax-free. In this scenario they will receive the full added benefit, equal to an additional $60/mo.
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August 16th, 2018

8/16/2018

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We are taking a long weekend so we will end this week's discussion on OPERATIONAL public policy inside global corporations by revisiting BENEDICT ARNOLD coming back to attack our US sovereignty by working for global 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS and of course welcomed with open arms by our Baltimore City Council and Baltimore Mayor PUGH all global banking 5% freemason/Greek player pols doing anything global banking tells them MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE all while pretending its all about keeping our 99% of WE THE CITIZENS of Baltimore safe......


The Sneaky Program to Spy on Baltimore From Above


Hundreds of thousands were watched from above at the behest of the local police department. And the program operated for months in secret.


Conor Friedersdorf  THE ATLANTIC
Aug 26, 2016


Ask the residents of any major American city to vote on a program of total aerial surveillance––where the cops would record footage of everything that happened within municipal borders, then store the high-resolution video on hard drives, so that they could effectively go back in time, tracing the outdoor movements of any individual––and the proposal would, at the very least, trigger furious debate.


But what if the police didn’t ask permission? What if they began recording their city’s residents from above without even bothering to inform their elected overseers?
That is what the police in Baltimore have just done.



It is illegal, in Maryland, to record a phone call without informing the person on the other end. Yet Baltimore police have been using an eye in the sky to surveil the whole city for months on end, recording hi-resolution footage and storing it on hard drives so that the movements of residents can be accessed at any time in the future.



They began doing this in secret, with the help of a private company, launching the dystopian collaboration without even consulting Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
“The revelation that a private company has been conducting secret aerial surveillance on behalf of the police department caused confusion, concern and outrage Wednesday among elected officials,” The Baltimore Sun reported. “Some demanded an immediate stop to the program pending a full, public accounting of its capabilities and its use in the city, including in the prosecution of criminal defendants... Others did not fault the program but said it should have been disclosed.”

The program was revealed by an article in Bloomberg that described its proprietary technology. “The system was built around an assembly of four to six commercially available industrial imaging cameras, synchronized and positioned at different angles, then attached to the bottom of a plane,” the story notes. “As the plane flew, computers stabilized the images from the cameras, stitched them together and transmitted them to the ground at a rate of one per second. This produced a searchable, constantly updating photographic map that was stored on hard drives.”
The product pitch: “Imagine Google Earth with TiVo capability.”



Back in 2014, I wrote about Ross McNutt, the man who owns the technology, and his company, Persistent Surveillance Systems, after they performed a test  over Compton, California, another municipality where residents weren’t told that a private corporation would record their every move at the behest of local law enforcement. Back then, Sgt. Douglas Iketani of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department acknowledged that his agency hid the initiative to avoid community opposition. “This system was kind of kept confidential from everybody in the public,” he said. “A lot of people do have a problem with the eye in the sky, the Big Brother, so to mitigate those kinds of complaints we basically kept it pretty hush hush.”


Reflecting on that willful disregard for democratic legitimacy, and the similarly presumptuous behavior of police officials in Baltimore––who were already on notice that there would be objections to shenanigans of this sort––it seems to me that the outrage so far offered by critics doesn’t go far enough. The right response, I think, is the termination of police leadership in any city that undertakes an initiative of this sort without at least alerting all of the relevant elected city officials.


Baltimore cops were able to circumvent the city’s elected leadership in part by relying on private funding. The surveillance flights over the city were bankrolled by Texas billionaires Laura and John Arnold. “John is a former Enron trader whose hedge fund, Centaurus Advisors, made billions before he retired,” Bloomberg reported. “Since then, the Arnolds have funded a variety of hot-button causes, including advocating for public pension rollbacks and charter schools. The Arnolds told McNutt that if he could find a city that would allow the company to fly for several months, they would donate the money to keep the plane in the air.”


That is worth dwelling on.
Technology has reached a point where billionaires can simply bankroll aerial surveillance that significantly and secretly compromises the privacy of hundreds of thousands.


And Baltimore police officials are dissembling about what they’ve done even now that the program has been made public. “This technology is about public safety,” a police department spokesman declared. “This isn’t surveilling or tracking anyone. It’s about catching those who choose to do harm to citizens in our city.” In fact, those criminals are caught precisely because the city is engaged in surveillance. By violating everyone’s privacy they can track a few people who’ve committed crimes.

OH, REALLY??????  THEN WHY ALL LAST CENTURY DID CITIZENS IN FAR-RIGHT WING AUTHORITARIAN DICTATORSHIPS ALWAYS FEEL THE NEED TO FLEE ALL THAT PROTECTION??????



“The only people who should be concerned in the city of Baltimore are criminals," the police spokesperson continued, betraying ignorance of the dangers technology like this poses. One wonders if there are safeguards in place to prevent Baltimore police officers with access to the footage from tracking peaceful protesters after they leave an assembly; or surveilling a city council candidate running on a police reform platform; or stalking an ex-wife or a romantic interest.



Who has access to the footage? Can the particular parts of the data they access be audited after the fact? How long will the data be retained? Did this project violate anyone’s Fourth Amendment rights? These are just the most obvious questions that are raised. It is not reassuring that the cops are saying, nothing to worry about here, rather than, “here are the specific abuses that we foresaw as inevitable but for safeguards––and here are the safeguards that we put in place to avert those abuses.”



This portentous story isn’t getting enough attention.
There is nothing like philosophical consensus in this country. But I submit that huge majorities, Republican and Democrat alike, would at least agree on this proposition: if a police department decides that it wants to surveil an entire city of Americans, recording aerial footage of everything that happens within municipal borders, then store the high-resolution video so that they can effectively go back in time, tracing the outdoor movements of any individual that they settle upon––if a police department wants to do that, they should have to secure the consent of the governed. And if a billionaire wants to do that on his own accord he or she should not be allowed.



If proceeding in secret has no consequences for police agencies or the burgeoning private surveillance industry, we’re all likely to suffer increasingly intrusive privacy violations as technology advances. Who is to say that this isn’t already happening, in your city, given the law enforcement community’s track record? In reality, unlike in 1984, Big Brother may watch for awhile without revealing that there is a Big Brother.
_______________________________________________


First, our US 99% WE THE PEOPLE and new to US immigrant citizens need to look at the complete picture of DEEP STATE surveillance and not just the fact of this one issue of sky cams.


We also KNOW global banking 5% pols and players in Baltimore City Council and Baltimore Mayor Rawlings-Blake knew about these global military security corporation installations because WE DID shouting over a decade ago---all this far-right wing authoritarian, militaristic structure is found in FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES overseas----simply MOVING FORWARD here in US during CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.

What our US 99% of citizens are being sold is this:  it is a POLICE NGO pushing these policies pretending it is about keeping police officers safe----this POLICE NGO not being our local public service police officers but that global banking 5% FAKE LABOR LEADERS knowing this will end our strong US freedom, liberty, justice, Bill of Rights, Constitutional protections not only for privacy but due process. 



'But what if the police didn’t ask permission? What if they began recording their city’s residents from above without even bothering to inform their elected overseers?


That is what the police in Baltimore have just done'.


We spoke in detail about our Baltimore Police Commissioner BATTS being that global banking 5% freemason/Greek player not installing REAL community public safety but orchestrating the installation of DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE.  Those organizations and Baltimore City council promoting POLICE COMMISSIONER BATTS during RAWLINGS-BLAKE----knew all of this was MOVING FORWARD as part of global militarized policing making US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES operate as those in third world nations.


Below we see global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS Brookings Institute CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA telling our 99% WE THE PEOPLE just what LAWS need to be passed to install


TOTALITARIAN DEEP STATE in a nation with 300 years of FREEDOM, LIBERTY, JUSTICE, BILL OF RIGHTS WITH 99% OF PEOPLE BEING CITIZENS.

So, if our US 99% are sitting in living rooms watching TV national news hearing discussions about WHOLEFOODS wanting DRONE AIRSPACE to deliver our groceries---then one would not understand REAL INFORMATION behind TOTALITARIAN DEEP SPACE----not reading these kinds of articles outlining what global banking 1% OLD WORLD KINGS AND QUEENS are dictating to our US global banking 5 % freemason/Greek pols and players to pass as legislation.  All of these policies are laced with SOCIAL BENEFIT-----HELPING US COMMUNITIES all having no intentions of doing so.

This is a long article but since BROOKINGS INSTITUTE has been writing public policy since REAGAN/CLINTON/BUSH for both Clinton neo-liberals and Bush neo-cons---it will show what global banking 5% players will install as policy.




Report
Drones and aerial surveillance: Considerations for legislatures


Gregory McNeal November 2014




The looming prospect of expanded use of unmanned aerial vehicles, colloquially known as drones, has raised understandable concerns for lawmakers.[1] Those concerns have led some to call for legislation mandating that nearly all uses of drones be prohibited unless the government has first obtained a warrant. Privacy advocates have mounted a lobbying campaign that has succeeded in convincing thirteen states to enact laws regulating the use of drones by law enforcement, with eleven of those thirteen states requiring a warrant before the government may use a drone.[2] The campaigns mounted by privacy advocates oftentimes make a compelling case about the threat of pervasive surveillance, but the legislation is rarely tailored in such a way to prevent the harm that advocates fear. In fact, in every state where legislation was passed, the new laws are focused on the technology (drones) not the harm (pervasive surveillance). In many cases, this technology centric approach creates perverse results, allowing the use of extremely sophisticated pervasive surveillance technologies from manned aircraft, while disallowing benign uses of drones for mundane tasks like accident and crime scene documentation, or monitoring of industrial pollution and other environmental harms.





The first drone-related legislation appeared in 2013 in Florida, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas.[3] In 2014, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Utah, and Iowa also passed laws seeking to address the use of drones by law enforcement.[4] As of the writing of this paper, the California legislature passed a drone-related bill that was vetoed by the governor, but the bill’s sponsors have vowed to revisit the issue in the next legislative session.[5] These legislative efforts have been aimed at restricting the government’s use of drone technology, while largely allowing the government to conduct identical surveillance when not using drone technology. This absurd anachronism is intentional, as privacy advocates have explicitly chosen to capitalize on the public interest and attention associated with the demonization of drone technology as a way to achieve legislative victories. These advocates are admittedly not focused on more sensible legislation that addresses harms irrespective of the technology used.[6]


AuthorGGregory McNeal

Associate Professor of Law - Pepperdine University School of Law



Privacy advocates contend that with drones, the government will be able to engage in widespread pervasive surveillance because drones are cheaper to operate than their manned counterparts. While drones are cheaper to operate, the drones most law enforcement agencies can afford are currently far less capable than their manned counterparts (oftentimes these drones are small remote controlled helicopters or airplanes, capable of a flight time of less than one hour).

The surveillance equipment that can be placed on these drones is also far less intrusive than that which can be mounted to manned aircraft. Moreover, the term “unmanned aircraft” is also misleading as there are no systems currently available to law enforcement that can conduct fully autonomous operations, all systems need an operator for part of the mission. Thus, in almost all instances drones are less capable than manned aerial surveillance platforms, and while the platform is cheaper (but less capable), the personnel costs still remain constant as an officer is required to operate the drone. Granted, there are very sophisticated systems used by the military, but even if law enforcement agencies were able to afford the highly sophisticated multi-million dollar Predator and Reaper systems like those used for surveillance on battlefields, those systems (both the aircraft and the ground control station) are more expensive than manned helicopters, require a ground crew to launch and recover the aircraft, and require both a pilot and a camera operator. In light of these facts, the legislation being pushed by privacy advocates has been explicitly directed at drone technology, not because the technology represents an actual threat to civil liberties, but because someday in the future, the technology may be intrusive.[7]


To counter the threat of surveillance, privacy advocates have focused solely on requiring warrants before the use of drones by law enforcement.

THIS IS NOT REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE POLICY -----WARRANTS DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.



Such a mandate oftentimes will result in the grounding of drone technology in circumstances where law enforcement use of drones would be beneficial and largely non-controversial. For example, in light of the Boston Marathon bombing, police may want to fly a drone above a marathon to ensure the safety of the public. Under many bills, police would not be allowed to use a drone unless they had a warrant, premised upon probable cause to believe a crime had been or was about to be committed. This requirement exceeds current Fourth Amendment protections with regard to the reasonableness of observing activities in public places. What this means is that the police would need to put together a warrant application with sufficient facts to prove to a judge that they had probable cause. That application would need to define with particularity the place to be searched or the persons to be surveilled. All of this would be required to observe people gathered in a public place, merely because the observation was taking place from a drone, rather than from an officer on a rooftop or in a helicopter. In a circumstance like a marathon, this probable cause showing will be difficult for the police to satisfy. After all, if the police knew who in the crowd was a potential bomber, they would arrest those individuals. Rather, a marathon is the type of event where the police would want to use a drone to monitor for unknown attackers, and in the unfortunate event of an attack, use the footage to identify the perpetrators. This is precisely the type of circumstance where the use of drone could be helpful, but unfortunately it has been outlawed in many states. To make matters worse, this type of drone surveillance would pose little to no harms to privacy. A marathon is a highly public event, the event is televised, it takes place on streets where there are surveillance cameras and spectators are photographing the event. Moreover, in the states where drones have been banned (unless accompanied by a warrant), the police have not been prohibited from using any other type of surveillance equipment — just drones. This technology centric approach has done little to protect privacy, but will certainly harm public safety, depriving law enforcement of a tool that they could use to protect people.



While warrants are appealing to privacy advocates, the enactment of overly broad restrictions on drone use can curtail non-invasive, beneficial uses of drones. Legislators should reject a warrant-based, technology centric approach as it is unworkable and counterproductive. Instead, legislators should follow a property rights centric approach, coupled with limits on persistent surveillance, data retention procedures, transparency and accountability measures and a recognition of the possibility that technology may make unmanned aerial surveillance more protective of privacy than manned surveillance. This paper makes five core recommendations:


Legislators should follow a property rights approach to aerial surveillance. This approach provides landowners with the right to exclude aircraft, persons, and other objects from a column of airspace extending from the surface of their land up to 350 feet above ground level. Such an approach may solve most public and private harms associated with drones.

A PROPERTY-RIGHTS APPROACH IN MOVING FORWARD GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND GLOBAL 1% AS THE ONLY PROPERTY OWNERS----WOULD LEAD TO INSURING JUST WHAT BROOKINGS IS PRETENDING IS NOT HAPPENING---AN END TO ALL PERSONAL PRIVACY.



Legislators should craft simple, duration-based surveillance legislation that will limit the aggregate amount of time the government may surveil a specific individual. Such legislation can address the potential harm of persistent surveillance, a harm that is capable of being committed by manned and unmanned aircraft.

WE THINK ALL OF WHAT BROOKINGS SUGGESTS CAN EASILY BE CHANGED -----WHY DOES BROOKINGS NOT SIMPLY STATE THAT ALL OF THESE SURVEILLANCE ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND ILLEGAL IN AMERICA?




Legislators should adopt data retention procedures that require heightened levels of suspicion and increased procedural protections for accessing stored data gathered by aerial surveillance. After a legislatively determined period of time, all stored data should be deleted.

WE ARE SURE GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE SECURITY CORPORATIONS WILL ADHERE TO ALL SUCH LAWS TELLING THEM TO DELETE----STOP BEING BAD----GOOD IDEA BROOKINGS.




Legislators should enact transparency and accountability measures, requiring government agencies to publish on a regular basis information about the use of aerial surveillance devices (both manned and unmanned).


TRANSPARENCY SAYS BROOKINGS---THAT HAS NOT HAPPENED IN US SINCE CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA DISMANTLED ALL OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY----YOU ARE BEHIND TIMES BROOKINGS.


Legislators should recognize that technology such as geofencing and auto-redaction, may make aerial surveillance by drones more protective of privacy than human surveillance.

Background



The domestic use of drones by law enforcement is a popular topic following passage of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012. The act directed that the FAA must integrate unmanned aircraft systems—drones—into the national airspace by September of 2015. A number of organizations have expressed concern over the possibility that thousands of drones will be crowding the skies, some armed with sophisticated cameras. The ACLU, for example, has been quite vocal in its criticism releasing a report that sets out their concerns over the prospect of intrusive aerial surveillance without proper safeguards.

THANKS ACLU----THAT POLICY WOULD BE ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS.  ABOVE WE SEE DEEP STATE MOVING FORWARD BY CLINTON/OBAMA IN 2012....



While a robust public debate over the use of domestic drones is warranted, the conclusion that widespread privacy violations are imminent is premature.



The conclusion that widespread privacy violations are imminent is premature.

MAYBE BROOKINGS DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE POLITICAL STANCE OF BEING PROACTIVE-----



While the FAA Modernization and Reform Act seeks the integration of unmanned aircraft into U.S. airspace by September 30, 2015, most of the provisions dealing with unmanned aircraft create a broad framework under which the FAA can explore the uses and feasibility of integration of this new technology. The key sections of the law direct the Secretary of Transportation and the Administrator of the FAA to draft plans, standards, and rules to ensure that drone integration proceeds in a safe and legal manner. In short, this is a public process where civil liberties and privacy groups will no doubt have a voice in crafting rules, and that voice seems to be at least as effective as the industry association’s voice. What is left out of the process is what state and local governments will do with the technology, and that is the primary focus of this paper.




Overview of Legal Issues


The Current State of Aerial Surveillance Law


Aerial observations of the curtilage of a home are generally not prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, so long as the government is conducting the surveillance from public navigable airspace, in a non-physically intrusive manner, and the government conduct does not reveal intimate activities traditionally associated with the use of the home. The U.S. Supreme Court addressed the issue of aerial surveillance in a series of cases in the late 1980′s:

NAKED-EYE SURVEILLANCE FROM AIRPLANES THROUGHOUT LAST CENTURY DID NOT INCLUDE SUPER-DUPER HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE TECHNOLOGY-----THESE ARE NOT RULINGS BEING RELEVANT TO TODAY.



In California v. Ciraolo[8] the Supreme Court held, “The Fourth Amendment was not violated by the naked-eye aerial observation of respondent’s backyard.” In Ciraolo, the police received a tip that someone was growing marijuana in the backyard at Ciraolo’s home. A police officer attempted to observe what was growing, but his observations were obscured by a six foot high outer fence and a ten foot high inner fence. The officer, suspicious that the fences might be intended to hide the growth of marijuana, obtained a private plane and flew over the backyard of Ciraolo’s property at an altitude of 1,000 feet. That altitude was within the FAA’s definition of public navigable airspace. The Supreme Court found that this was not a search, and therefore was not prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. In so finding, Chief Justice Burger stated that in erecting a 10 foot fence, Ciraolo manifested “his own subjective intent and desire to maintain privacy as to his unlawful agriculture” but his “intent and desire” did not amount to an expectation of privacy. The Court noted that the fence “might not shield these plants from the eyes of a citizen or a policeman perched on the top of a truck or a 2-level bus.”[9] Accordingly, “it was not ‘entirely clear’ whether [Ciraolo] maintained a ‘subjective expectation of privacy from all observations of his backyard,’ or only from ground level observations.”[10] The Court believed that it was unreasonable for Ciraolo to expect privacy in his backyard when a routine overflight, or an observation “by a power company repair mechanic on a pole overlooking the yard” would reveal exactly what the police discovered in their overflight.[11]




They should not be required to ignore evidence of criminality merely because they witness the crime through the eyes of a drone.



At the same time that Ciraolo was decided, the Court held in Dow Chemical Co. v. United States that “the use of an aerial mapping camera to photograph an industrial manufacturing complex from navigable airspace similarly does not require a warrant under the Fourth Amendment.”

USING ONE-TIME AERIAL MAPPING FOR DETAILING REAL ESTATE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CONTINUOUS AERIAL SURVEILLANCE---THIS RULING HAS NO RELEVANCE.



In Dow Chemical Co., the Supreme Court did acknowledge that the use of technology might change the Court’s inquiry, stating “surveillance of private property by using highly sophisticated surveillance equipment not generally available to the public, such as satellite technology, might be constitutionally proscribed absent a warrant.” But then the Court dismissed the notion, stating “[a]ny person with an airplane and an aerial camera could readily duplicate” the photographs at issue. In short, the Court stated, “taking of aerial photographs of an industrial plant complex from navigable airspace is not a search prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.”



In Ciraolo, the court had articulated a similar theme, noting that the defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his backyard, despite having erected fences to obscure the yard from view. The Court reasoned that while the defendant shielded his yard from the view of those on the street, other observations from a truck or a two-level bus might have allowed a person to see into his yard. Continuing, the Court stated “The Fourth Amendment protection of the home has never been extended to require law enforcement officers to shield their eyes when passing by a home on public thoroughfares.” Despite the defendant’s fence, the Court said “the mere fact that an individual has taken measures to restrict some views of his activities [does not] preclude an officer’s observations from a public vantage point where he has a right to be and which renders the activities clearly visible.” The police flew a small commercial airplane over Ciraolo’s land from “public navigable airspace” and did so “in physically nonintrusive manner.” Therefore, while the defendant may have expected privacy in his backyard, privacy from aerial viewing was not one that society was prepared to deem reasonable. The Court stated, “[i]n an age where private and commercial flight in the public airways is routine, it is unreasonable for respondent to expect that his marijuana plants were constitutionally protected from being observed with the naked eye from an altitude of 1,000 feet.”




Shortly after Ciraolo and Dow Chemical Co. the Supreme Court analyzed the use of helicopters for aerial surveillance. In Florida v. Riley, the Supreme Court held that “the Fourth Amendment does not require the police traveling in the public airways at an altitude of 400 feet to obtain a warrant in order to observe what is visible to the naked eye.”[12] The Riley court found that the rule of Ciraolo controlled. Riley, just like Ciraolo, took measures that “protected against ground level observation” but, “the sides and roof of his greenhouse were left partially open” just as the sky above Ciraolo’s yard allowed one to look directly down into his yard. In Riley, the police flew a helicopter over Riley’s land, and observed marijuana plants growing in Riley’s greenhouse.



The Court in Riley found that “what was growing in the greenhouse was subject to viewing from the air.” The police conduct in Riley was acceptable because the police were flying in publicly navigable airspace, “no intimate details connected with the use of the home or curtilage were observed, and there was no undue noise, and no wind, dust, or threat of injury.” The Court continued, “[a]ny member of the public could legally have been flying over Riley’s property in a helicopter at the altitude of 400 feet and could have observed Riley’s greenhouse. The police officer did no more.” In an important passage, concurring in the judgment, Justice O’Connor noted “public use of altitudes lower than [400 feet]—particularly public observations from helicopters circling over the curtilage of a home—may be sufficiently rare that police surveillance from such altitudes would violate reasonable expectations of privacy, despite compliance with FAA air safety regulations.”




Thus, the law for at least the last 25 years has allowed the police to fly aircraft over private property, backyards, factory farms, industrial plants, and any other place where the average citizen may fly a Cessna. The police may make observations from the air, just like a person on a commercial flight inbound to an airport can look down and observe the yards of people below and just like a utility worker on a pole can look down into an adjacent yard. Armed with that information, the police can use it to get a warrant to go in on foot and investigate what they previously observed from a lawful vantage point (without a warrant). For more than two decades, the police have not been required to turn a blind eye to evidence of criminality merely because they observed it from the air, they similarly should not be required to ignore evidence of criminality merely because they witness the crime through the eyes of a drone.




The Current State of Airspace Rights



As the prior section indicated, the Supreme Court’s aerial surveillance jurisprudence makes reference to “public navigable airspace” or observations from “a public vantage point where [an officer] has a right to be.” By tying the Fourth Amendment’s protections to the location in airspace from which the surveillance was conducted, the Supreme Court has left open the possibility that low altitude surveillance may violate the Fourth Amendment. Importantly, the drones that law enforcement are most likely to acquire and operate are most effective at altitudes below 500 feet. Thus, drones are poised to disrupt settled Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, by operating in airspace which heretofore has not been the subject of case law or statutes.

OUR US 99% WE THE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THESE FEW DECADES OF ROBBER BARON APPOINTMENTS TO US SUPREME COURT WERE ILLEGAL BECAUSE CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA SPENT ENTIRE TERMS SATURATED IN ILLEGAL AND CRIMINAL ACTIONS----THESE US SUPREME COURT RULINGS ONE AT A TIME----CAN BE VOIDED.



To understand this emergent legal issue, it’s necessary to understand the unsettled nature of landowner’s rights in low-altitude airspace. In the 1946 case United States v. Causby, the Supreme Court analyzed the airspace rights of landowners.[13] The Causby case involved chicken farmers whose farm was adjacent to a small municipal airport that the U.S. military began using during World War II.[14] The military flights were so low (83 feet above the land and 67 feet above the Causby’s home) that the Causby’s chickens would be frightened by each overflight, fly into the wall of their chicken coop, and die.[15] The Causby’s sued the federal government claiming that the government’s flights constituted a Fifth Amendment taking.[16]



The Supreme Court’s opinion, authored by Justice William Douglas, began by analyzing the ad coleum doctrine.[17] That doctrine had its roots in common law jurisprudence dating back centuries to Cino da Pisoia’s declaration “Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad coelum” which translated means “[to] whomsoever the soil belongs, he owns also to the sky.”[18] The doctrine “assigned airspace rights based on ownership of the surface land situated immediately below the space…airspace held by landowners…theoretically extended indefinitely to the outer reaches of the heavens.”[19] Justice Douglas, analyzing the ad coelum doctrine quickly dispensed with it, stating that it had “no place in the modern world.”[20] Rather, Douglas said that a landowner owned “at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land.”[21] If the government or any other party intrudes into that space, such intrusions should be treated “in the same category as invasions of the surface.”[22] Such invasions could, in the right circumstances, be treated as a trespass and on the facts presented by Causby the flights could be considered a compensable taking. The facts of Causby importantly involved flights that were “so low and so frequent as to be a direct and immediate interference with the enjoyment and use of the land.” The Causby opinion thus created two types of airspace, the public navigable airspace, a “public highway” in which the landowner could not exclude aircraft from flying, and the airspace below that which extends downward to the surface, in which landowners held some right to exclude aircraft.

THESE COMMON LAW RULINGS REGARDING LAND-OWNERS HAVING RIGHTS EXTENDING TO SKY ABOVE THAT REAL ESTATE WERE MADE AT A TIME IN US HISTORY WHEN LAND WAS OWNED BY US CITIZENS AND BUSINESS-OWNERS-----MOVING FORWARD IS PLACING ALL US REAL ESTATE IN HANDS OF GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND GLOBAL 1% OFTEN FOREIGN-OWNED.


This discussion brings into focus the possibility that a landowner may exclude others from entering the low altitude airspace above their property, and as such may exclude drones (whether government or civilian operated) from entering that airspace. But, if such rights in fact exist, at what altitude are such property rights triggered? Unfortunately there is very little clarity on this point. The Supreme Court referred to this airspace as the “immediate reaches” above the land, into which intrusions would “subtract from the owner’s full enjoyment of the property.”[23]



This graphic illustrates the complexities associated with the jurisprudence and regulations governing aerial surveillance and airspace rights. FAA regulations create a minimum altitude of 500 or 1000 feet in some areas (exempting helicopters from those minimums in certain circumstances). Those regulations also create a maximum altitude of 400 feet for model aircraft (which would include some drones). The Supreme Court in Ciraolo [GM1] approved aerial surveillance from manned aircraft flying at 1,000 feet, and in Riley approved aerial surveillance from a helicopter at 400 feet; however in Causby the Supreme Court said flights at 83 feet while taking off from an airport violated the Causby’s property rights. The average two story home is 35 feet tall, the question mark depicts the gray area which this paper argues must be clarified.

The lack of clarity presents a significant issue of law and public policy as the drones that are most likely to be operated by law enforcement (and citizens) are small planes and helicopters that are most effective when used below navigable airspace, that is to say, below 500 feet (although 500 feet is a rough rule of thumb).[24] Consider the Supreme Court’s opinion in California v. Ciraolo, central to the Court’s holding was the notion that government surveillance from 1,000 feet above the ground took place from a “public vantage point” where a police officer had “a right to be.”[25] But if the officer in Ciraolo were to conduct that surveillance today, with a drone, he would likely not fly the drone up to 1,000 feet, in fact he would likely fly it just high enough above the landowner’s property to look down and observe the marijuana plants, likely under 40 feet in altitude. Would such a flight violate the landowner’s reasonable expectation of privacy? It would largely depend on how obscured the land was from other observations at the same altitude. It would also require that the landowner have a right to exclude the drone from flying over their property. Of course such an exclusionary right would not prevent the officer from flying the drone above public land, such as the street. In such a circumstance the officer would need only stand on the sidewalk and fly the drone to an altitude high enough to see into the landowner’s property. Whether such a low altitude aerial observation above public land, peering into private property, would be considered a public vantage point and therefore acceptable from a Fourth Amendment perspective is similarly an open question.[26]



In Riley, the plurality said the case was controlled by Ciraolo,[27] in her concurring opinion, Justice O’Connor presciently highlighted the problems with the Riley (and by extension the Ciraolo) Court’s opinion. She wrote:



Imagine a helicopter capable of hovering just above an enclosed courtyard or patio without generating any noise, wind, or dust at all and, for good measure, without posing any threat of injury. Suppose the police employed this miraculous tool to discover not only what crops people were growing in their greenhouses, but also what books they were reading and who their dinner guests were. Suppose, finally, that the FAA regulations remained unchanged, so that the police were undeniably “where they had a right to be.” Would today’s plurality continue to assert that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” was not infringed by such surveillance? Yet that is the logical consequence of the plurality’s rule.”[28]




Analyzing this passage, Professor Troy Rule notes “[t]wenty-five years after Riley, law enforcement agencies can now easily purchase the very hypothetical ‘miraculous tool’ that O’Connor forebodingly described.”[29] It’s not clear that such devices can be “easily purchase[d],” at least not yet. The small drones police are likely to purchase today cannot operate without creating noise and are incapable of seeing what books people are reading. Interestingly, Justice O’Connor was discussing manned aircraft, and manned aircraft do in fact possess the capabilities she feared. Yet we have witnessed very few proposals seeking to ban the use of high powered cameras mounted to helicopters or airplanes.[30] Given the lack of interest in banning those capabilities from manned aircraft, it’s difficult to see why banning drones (which do not yet possess such capabilities) is a rational policy choice. Nevertheless, if engineers can continue to increase the lift capacity of drones, and can miniaturize the superior technology already mounted on manned aircraft, drones may eventually possess the capabilities Justice O’Connor feared. At that point it may be prudent to legislate with an eye towards controlling those observations (irrespective of whether they are from a drone or a manned platform).





More important than the future observational capabilities though, are the locational capabilities drones currently possess, namely the ability to hover “just above an enclosed courtyard.” At those lower altitudes, the drones that law-enforcement agencies are most likely to acquire become highly capable--and problematic. Thus the question of what exactly is the publicly navigable airspace has become increasingly critical to resolving how to deal with aerial surveillance. State and local governments do not need to wait on the FAA to define such areas. In fact, through zoning laws, state and local governments can clearly define the rights of landowners in the airspace above their land, in so doing they will answer many of the open questions regarding public vantage points.

Soldiers stand behind of a camera by Unmanned Aerial System ‘Shadow’ during an official presentation by the German and U.S. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) at the U.S. military base in Vilseck-Grafenwoehr October 8, 2013. REUTERS/Michaela RehleRecommendations To Address Drones And Aerial SurveillanceThis section is divided into two parts. The first part is a series of five “core recommendations” which, if adopted, will address most public and private harms associated with drones while balancing the rights of private parties and the needs of law enforcement. The second part consists of a series of principles that legislators should remain cognizant of if they choose to forgo the core recommendations and follow the problematic warrant-based approach advanced by some advocacy groups.




Core Recommendations

Legislators should follow a property rights approach to aerial surveillance, explicitly extending to property owner’s rights in their airspace up to 350 feet above ground level. Such an approach may solve most public and private harms associated with drones by allowing the landowner to exclude intrusions into their airspace by government and private parties.

WHEN ALL US REAL ESTATE IS FALLING INTO THE HANDS OF EXTREMELY RICH-----COUNTER TO ANY PERIOD IN US HISTORY ----THESE ARE APPLES TO ORANGES LEGAL STANCES----PROPERTY RIGHTS WHEN 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE NO LONGER ABLE TO OWN PROPERTY----REALLY?? 

HOW DARK AGES OF BROOKINGS!

AS A PRIVATE HOMEOWNER I DO NOT WANT SMART METERS-----TO BAD EVERYONE MUST HAVE SMART METERS.  AS A HOMEOWNER I DO NOT WANT AERIAL SURVEILLANCE OVER MY PROPERTY---TO LATE, THE INSTITUTION FIVE BLOCKS AWAY ALREADY SAID OK----AND WE USE A WIDE-ANGLE LENS.




The uncertainty associated with landowner rights in the airspace immediately above their property has raised two problems. First, there is little clarity regarding where low altitude aerial surveillance by the government would violate the Fourth Amendment. Is it at 500 feet if by a fixed wing aircraft, or 1,000 feet?[31] Is it 400 feet if by a helicopter? In Riley the Court said that the surveillance conducted at 400 feet by a helicopter did not require a warrant, but it left open the possibility that surveillance at a lower altitude would be acceptable. Thus raising the question, what about a flight at 350 feet? The case law on whether this would be a lawful observation is not clear, but it’s difficult to see how a court applying the principles of Riley would find substantive differences from an observation at 350 feet versus one at 400 feet. That’s because the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence tells us to look at whether the observation took place from “navigable airspace” or from a vantage point at which a member of the public could otherwise be. For helicopters, navigable airspace could easily include 350 feet above ground level, so long as the pilot was not creating a hazard.[32] For drones and model aircraft, FAA rules and guidelines for hobbyists require operation below 400 feet, thus an operation at 350 feet would be from a public vantage point. The problem is not the technology, the problem is the ability of landowners to exclude aerial observations from certain vantage points (that’s a property rights problem). Any legislative solution for aerial surveillance must address this issue. Second, the absence of clarity with regard to property rights has also raised concerns about the privacy implications of private (non-government) uses of drones. While private drone use is beyond the scope of this paper, the right to exclude the government from conducting aerial surveillance is inextricably tied to whether the public would have had a right to make the observation the police made. The linkage of these two concepts suggests that a property rights approach may provide a way to harmonize these separate policy concerns and also address most of the concerns associated with aerial surveillance.





Property law is almost exclusively governed by state and local laws. Arizona State law professor Troy Rule—one of the first scholars to analyze property rights in the context of drones—- notes, “[u]nlike the murky set of legal rules governing low altitude airspace, the laws delineating property rights in the surface land could hardly be clearer.”[33] The land, Professor Rule explains, is owned and those owners have rights to exclude trespassers and other intruders. However, “[t]he commons regime that governs high-altitude airspace is in many ways the antithesis of the private property regime that applies to surface land: no one owns high-altitude space, and everyone is welcome to use it if they follow certain rules.”[34] In between the land and high altitude airspace is an area that is murky, and largely undefined. State and local governments can act to clarify the rights of landowners in the zone between the land and high altitude airspace.[35]

THIS IS WHY MOVING FORWARD DEEP STATE US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE POLICIES ARE LOCALLY CONTROLLED-----IT IS OUR LOCAL CITY COUNCILS AND STATE ASSEMBLIES PASSING THESE UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND ILLEGAL LAWS ELIMINATING ALL OUR BILL OF RIGHTS AROUND PERSONAL PRIVACY.


State and local governments that act to craft laws clarifying property rights in low altitude airspace could do so by arguing that they are merely codifying long standing property law doctrine. In so doing, state and local governments could rely on the Causby court’s declaration that “the flight of airplanes, which skim the surface but do not touch it, is as much an appropriation of the use of the land as a more conventional entry upon it… [such flights] are in the same category as invasions of the surface.”[36]





If low altitude flights immediately above a landowner’s property are akin to walking onto that property, then police who fly drones at low altitude above a landowner’s property to observe the backyard of a person’s home have engaged in conduct akin to walking onto that property. The Fourth Amendment analysis would require analyzing whether the landowner could have excluded the public from making an observation from that vantage point (i.e. did the flight take place in an area where the public had a right to be). Thus to control these low altitude flights, legislators will need to craft statutes that provide property owners with the right to exclude members of the public from this low altitude airspace.




Granted a rule extending property rights in a manner to prevent low altitude flights directly over a landowner’s property won’t preclude the police from asking a neighbor if they can fly above their adjacent property to obtain a better vantage point, just like existing rules don’t preclude the police (or a private citizen) from asking a neighbor if they can come inside to look out a second floor window into neighboring property. Similarly, such a rule won’t preclude the police from flying above public land (such as sidewalks and streets), but local zoning laws could address flights over public land. This proposed approach will preclude the police from flying at low altitudes directly over a greenhouse like the one in Riley or directly over a backyard like that in Ciraolo, but it would preserve the ability of the police to conduct those already lawful surveillance activities at or near the altitudes at which they were conducted in Riley (above 400 feet) and Ciraolo (above 1,000 feet). Such an approach would also have the secondary effect of making low altitude paparazzi drone flights unlawful when flown for example, directly above Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s home.[37]


Legislators should follow a property rights approach to aerial surveillance. This approach provides landowners with the right to exclude aircraft, persons, and other objects from a column of airspace extending from the surface of their land up 350 feet above ground level (AGL).

What might such a statute look like? To preserve privacy, the landowner’s right must extend high enough to make the exclusion effective. However to preserve a right of transit for an Amazon or Google delivery drone, a mapping and real estate drone, or model aircraft, the right of exclusion cannot extend all the way up to the navigable airspace line (500 feet in most locations, 1,000 feet in congested areas).[38] An appropriate statute would thus state that landowners own the airspace above their property up to 350 feet above ground level. In most locations that will provide the landowner with airspace rights that extend to more than ten times the height of the average two story home. By virtue of owning this column of land up to 350 feet, the landowner will have a right to exclude the general public (and therefore the police) from flying above their property in a way that will interfere with their enjoyment of the land. This proposal draws the line at 350 feet because while navigable airspace is generally understood as existing at a minimum altitude of 500 feet, the FAA has promulgated regulations and guidance which allow for the use of model aircraft (which includes drones) at altitudes up to a maximum of 400 feet (thus leaving a 100 foot buffer space between model aircraft operations and navigable airspace).[39] Setting the landowner’s airspace at 350 feet provides a 50 foot buffer space between the ceiling of the property owner’s airspace and the ceiling of model aircraft airspace, allowing for a small transit zone for model aircraft. Such a transit zone may allow model aircraft operators to traverse the airspace above private property without fear of violating the landowner’s property rights, while simultaneously avoiding violating FAA regulations.




This proposal creates, from 350 feet upwards to navigable airspace, a buffer zone in which drones and other aircraft can fly (up to the established limit). In between the 350 foot ceiling of the landowner’s airspace and the floor of publicly navigable airspace (500 or 1,000 feet) drones could otherwise operate to transit over a landowner’s property en route to delivering goods. This also means that drones could even operate in this space to take photographs or conduct surveillance. But, while such surveillance may at first blush seem problematic, this proposal is in fact a nearly status quo solution. Under Riley, a warrantless helicopter observation from 400 feet was deemed constitutional, with the Court leaving open the possibility that observations from lower altitudes might also be constitutional. Thus, this proposal provides greater protections than those in Riley by providing greater precision. This proposal creates a bright line rule at 350 feet, making it clear that any aerial intrusion at or below that altitude would violate the landowner’s property rights and therefore would be a non-public vantage point. Thus, while drones and helicopters might still conduct surveillance at 350 feet, drone surveillance at that altitude will be far less intrusive than helicopter surveillance at 400 feet because a helicopter’s larger size enables it to carry far more sophisticated surveillance equipment; concomitantly observations from drones at 350 feet will be far less intrusive than observations from helicopters flying at the same altitude.[40]


This image shows what a commercially available ($1,300) drone equipped with an HD camera sees at 350 feet altitude. The red arrow points to the drone operator. Some drones can carry cameras with zoom lens capabilities, however those systems are more expensive, larger, and louder. Those systems are also universally less capable than manned aircraft, which can carry heavier and more sophisticated surveillance equipment. (Photo credit: NPR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zT1f_k0qRQ ).

Defining property rights in this manner (extending them up to 350 feet) will allow courts to readily adjudicate claims that an aerial observation violated the Fourth Amendment. A court’s inquiry into whether an officer had a right to be in the place where they made the observation, or whether the police observation was from a public vantage point will turn on this question “Did the police observation take place from a vantage point that violates the landowner’s right to exclude?” To answer that question, a court need only look to the statute and facts associated with the observation. With drones, those can be readily discernible as most law enforcement drones carry sophisticated GPS software that pinpoints their location. The salutary effect of this approach is that civil suits for unlawful operation of drones above a landowner’s property by voyeurs and other onlookers will be adjudicated with reference to clearly defined property rights, allowing courts to evaluate trespass and other claims.[41]

THE DISTANCE OF 350 FEET MEANS NOTHING WHEN DISCUSSING PRIVACY LAWS SURROUNDING HIGH-POWERED TECHNOLOGY----HAVING A MANNED-AIRPLANE FLY OVERHEAD AT 350 FEET LOOKING DOWN HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH 350 FEET WITH HIGH-POWERED CAMERAS.


This proposal is not intended to ban aerial surveillance, rather it is intended to place aerial surveillance from drones and manned aircraft on equal legal footing; in that sense it is a status quo solution that is technology neutral. This proposal also ensures that policymakers remain focused on the harms of aerial surveillance, not the platform. Thus, if future law enforcement agencies begin using blimps (also known as aerostats), manned aircraft equipped with sophisticated cameras, or drones, in a manner that appreciably increases the current amount of aerial surveillance, policymakers can address those new technologically-enabled harms, rather than focusing merely on drones.


Legislators should craft simple duration based surveillance legislation that addresses the potential for “persistent surveillance.”




To address the concern that the property based approach will allow drones or other aircraft to sit in the buffer airspace between the property owner’s airspace and publicly navigable airspace, legislators should focus on controlling the duration of surveillance. Doing so will limit two feared harms; first, duration based limits on aerial surveillance will address the possibility that drones or other technologies will enable the police to follow individuals and monitor their day to day activities. Second, duration based limits will address the possibility that drones or other aircraft will be used to hover directly above a landowner’s property for lengthy periods of time monitoring an individual’s day to day activities. These two forms of persistent surveillance can be conducted with manned or unmanned aircraft, therefore legislators should take a technology neutral approach to the problem, placing limits on the duration of surveillance rather than on the platform from which the surveillance can be conducted.


US CITIZENS HAVE BEEN FIGHTING THESE FEW DECADES TO STOP NSA-----HOMELAND SECURITY FROM VIOLATING EVERY LAW SURROUNDING ILLEGAL WIRETAPPING TO ILLEGAL USE OF TRACKING DEVICES ---ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE BY CURRENT GLOBAL BANKING 1% POLS AND AGENCIES---WHY WOULD WE THINK THESE LAWS WOULD DO ANYTHING??


Crafting legislation that places aggregate limits on how long law enforcement may surveil specific persons or places can protect against the possibility of persistent surveillance.


For example:





  • Surveillance of a person may continue for 60 minutes at the officer’s discretion.
  • 60 minute to 48 hour surveillance may only take place with a court order and reasonable suspicion.
  • Surveillance of longer than 48 hours is permissible only when accompanied by a warrant and probable cause.[42]


The specific amount of time legislators may settle on (and the period of aggregation) will depend on whether a jurisdiction wants to value privacy or law enforcement efficiency. Note that the focus here is on surveillance of a specific person. If surveillance of widespread areas is occurring, legislators may want lengthier limits. For example, limiting aerial surveillance to 60 minutes unless accompanied by a warrant would mean that law enforcement could not monitor specific events such as the Boston Marathon. Such a limitation is likely not a desired policy outcome, and legislators should be careful to craft limitations in such a way that they address the harm of persistent surveillance (tracking of individuals) versus public safety (area surveillance) or event based surveillance.




Irrespective of the time chosen, the point is that carefully crafting duration based rules for surveillance (whether by drone, a manned aircraft, or otherwise) is a better approach than the current drone focused approach which is oftentimes riddled with blanket bans and exceptions.[43] Rather than crafting special exceptions, legislating with an eye towards persistent surveillance rules based on clearly defined durational limits creates public policy that is clearer and easier to follow, easier for courts to adjudicate, and doesn’t allow for loopholes based on technology.


Adopt data retention procedures that require heightened levels of suspicion and increased procedural protections for accessing data as time passes.




Many critics of drones raise the legitimate concern that the government’s collection of aerial imagery and video will enable pervasive surveillance that allows the government to know what all citizens are doing at all points in time, and even will allow government officials to review footage years after its collection, revealing the most intimate details about a person’s life. This is not a problem unique to drones, but is rather a recurring theme in critiques of all video and still imagery collection. Legislators should adopt policies that address collection and retention of information in a way that focuses on the information that is collected, how it is stored, and how it is accessed, rather than the particular technology used to collect the information. Thus, while this section speaks specifically about drones, the principles articulated here apply to all forms of video and imagery collection.




To protect against pervasive surveillance and warehousing of data about citizens, legislators should enact retention policies and procedures that make it more difficult for the government to access information as time passes. Eventually, information collected by the government should be destroyed at the end of a pre-determined period of time. While the specific duration of time and processes may be subject to debate, all procedures and timelines should be legislatively determined and therefore cannot be modified by individual agencies. To protect the rights of individuals, the information gathered and stored should be exempt from sunshine act requests, but should be fully discoverable in any criminal prosecution. A few process items will form the bulk of any responsible retention procedure:



  • At the moment of collection up to 30 days after collection, information should be treated like any other contemporaneous or near contemporaneous observation. Agents of government should be able to monitor aerial surveillance in real time or near real time just as they observe CCTV’s in real time or near real time. This 30 day window will allow law enforcement to respond to immediate or nearly immediate complaints about violations of the law.
  • After 30 days have passed from initial collection, information collected from aerial surveillance should be moved from servers openly accessible by law enforcement, to servers that are only accessible with a court order and a showing of reasonable suspicion.
  • After 90 days have passed from initial collection, police should not be allowed to access information stored on servers without a court order and a showing of probable cause that indicates that the information contained on the servers contains evidence of a crime.
  • All information stored on servers should be automatically deleted after a period of time so that the government does not maintain a long term archive of information about individuals. That period of time may be as short as 120 days, but should not be longer than five years.


Legislators should adopt transparency and accountability measures, requiring government agencies to publish on a regular basis information about the sue of aerial surveillance devices (both manned and unmanned).




Transparency and accountability measures should be required regardless of whether legislators follow the core recommendations or the warrant-based principles (Part B. below). Transparency and accountability measures may be more effective than suppression rules or warrants for controlling and deterring wrongful government surveillance. To hold law enforcement accountable, legislators should mandate that the use of all aerial surveillance devices (manned or unmanned) be published on a regular basis (perhaps quarterly) on the website of the agency operating the system.




These usage logs should detail who operated the system, when it was operated, where it was operated (including GPS coordinates), and what the law enforcement purpose for the operation was. Legislators may even mandate that unmanned systems operated in their jurisdictions come equipped with software that allows for the easy export of flight logs that contain this information. Such logs will allow privacy advocates and concerned citizens to closely monitor how aerial surveillance devices are being used, enabling the political process as a mechanism to hold operators accountable.




In circumstances where publishing usage logs may reveal information that is law enforcement sensitive (such as an ongoing investigation) the agency operating the drone may keep their usage logs confidential until the investigation is closed. The agency should be required to make the logs public within 30 days of the close of an investigation. To facilitate public accountability legislators should mandate that all logs be published in an open and machine-readable format consistent with the President’s Executive Order of May 9, 2013.[44]


AS BROOKINGS KNOWS----US PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE ORDERS ARE ONLY GOOD WHILE THAT PRESIDENT IS IN OFFICE AS WELL AS THE FACT THAT THESE PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE ORDERS HAVE BEEN ILLEGAL THESE FEW DECADES------THIS IS BANANA-REPUBLIC APPROACH TO LEGISLATION HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH US 99% WE THE PEOPLE BEING LEGISLATORS

For evidence that this flight log approach works, one need only look across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom where many police departments publish their helicopter flight logs on their webpage; in fact some even live tweet their helicopter’s activities. While there is no law within the United Kingdom that specifically requires police departments or law enforcement agencies to publish the flight logs of their helicopters, their version of the Freedom of Information Act appears to be the legislative authority prompting publication of police helicopter logs.




Like the United States, there are a number of public watchdog groups in the United Kingdom that monitor police activity, including groups whose sole purpose is to monitor the activity (and related noise complaints) of police helicopters.[45] These groups, and their respective websites, act as a forum for noise and privacy complaints from various individuals across the Kingdom, and several of these groups organize and lobby Members of Parliament (MPs) to pass legislation restricting helicopter flyovers.[46] These groups, and the advocacy which they generate, appear to be largely responsible for the recent trend of many UK police departments publishing their helicopters’ flight logs, or even creating Twitter accounts for their helicopters that publish real-time or delayed-time updates of the aircraft’s activity.[47]




These helicopter Twitter accounts, which have become a growing trend amongst British police departments, have had an immediate and powerful effect on public relations in their respective jurisdictions. In Islington, the police department went from struggling to handle the overload of noise complaints relating to the department’s use of its helicopter to receiving no complaints after the creation of its Helicopter Twitter feed.[48] The Twitter account gained over 7,000 followers after its first few weeks, and the public criticism of police helicopter activity ceased entirely. The department reflected on the effectiveness—as well as future potential—of the Twitter feed by issuing this statement:




Maybe that is all people wanted – just to know and understand what we were doing. We don’t update people in real time, but my vision is that soon we will be able to let people know about an operation as soon as it is over. In some cases we could get them to help – imagine if an elderly person with Alzheimer’s was missing in Islington, we could Tweet our followers to keep an eye out.




The Suffolk Police Department launched its Twitter feed with the hope of shedding some light on police practices. Roger Lewis, an observer with the Suffolk Police, described the department’s intentions in the following way:




We hope to use the Twitter feed to highlight the positive work being done by the Air Operations Unit and to keep members of the public informed as to why the helicopter has been deployed. We hope people will enjoy finding out more about the Unit and hopefully our tweets will give some explanation as to why we have been deployed and give some interesting insights into a very important policing tool.[49]



It is not difficult to see how the practice of disclosing non-sensitive flight logs through a public channel—such as a department web page or through Twitter—can be a useful tool in reassuring the public that law enforcement’s helicopter does not represent Big Brother’s eye in the sky, but rather embodies a part of the department’s lawful policing practices. Just as a police helicopter high overhead can be ominous to those on the ground who are unaware of its purposes, the very idea of drones—of any kind—flying above American cities and towns might be foreboding to many lay persons. By requiring law enforcement to publish data or logs, legislators can add a citizen-centric political check that will help quell the fears of a society that is not yet certain how it should react to the increasing presence of aerial surveillance devices over the skies of America.

WE ARE ALREADY SEEING POLICE CAMERA VIDEO BEING CORRUPTED AND EDITED ILLEGALLY BY THE VERY PEOPLE CHARGED TO SEE THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN---HOW WILL ANY OF THE ABOVE BE ENFORCED???



Recognize that technology such as geofencing and auto-redaction may make aerial surveillance by drones more protective of privacy than human surveillance.



Technology continues to evolve at such a rapid pace that it is possible drones and other aerial surveillance technologies may enable targeted surveillance that protects privacy, while still allowing for the collection of evidence. Technology can further the goal of privacy by using geofencing technology to only collect evidence from specific locations, and using redaction programming to automatically obscure information at the point of collection. Creative legislators can embrace technology by writing laws requiring that aerial surveillance devices have systems to protect privacy.



For example, imagine that the police receive a tip about marijuana growing in the backyard of 123 Main Street. They dispatch a helicopter to gather aerial photographs of the 123 Main Street property from an altitude of 700 feet. While the police are overhead photographing 123 Main Street, they look down and see a woman sunbathing in the adjacent property at 125 Main Street. While the inadvertent observation of the woman at 125 Main Street does not violate her Fourth Amendment rights, it may nevertheless be viewed from her perspective as an offensive intrusion that violates her personal expectation of privacy (even if it’s not one that society, per the courts, is willing to deem reasonable). Imagine the same collection scenario, this time conducted by a drone or a camera on a manned helicopter with software that is programmed to protect privacy. Prior to the mission the aircraft would be instructed to only document the activities ongoing at 123 Main Street. The software could be required to automatically redact any additional information gathered from adjoining properties (such as 125 Main Street, the home of our hypothetical sunbather). Furthermore, legislators could also require that software automatically blur the faces of individuals, with faces only being revealed upon an adequate showing of either reasonable suspicion or probable cause (the particular standard to be determined by the legislature) to believe that an individual is or was involved in criminal activity. If a state or local government required that aircraft engaged in aerial surveillance be coded for privacy, the rights of the adjacent sunbather and any other inadvertently observed individuals would be protected. If such policies were mandated, society may evolve to the point where drones are mandated when manned flights might place law enforcement officers in a situation where they might be tempted to make unwanted observations of innocent people. Thus, drones may someday be more protective of privacy than manned aircraft.



Alternate Recommendations and Principles



If legislators choose to ignore the core principles and approach articulated above, the following recommendations are intended to provide legislators with principles that will guide their policymaking in the more problematic warrant-based approach to drones and aerial surveillance.



Legislators should reject calls for a blanket requirement that all drone use be accompanied by a warrant.



If legislators forgo the property rights approach detailed in Part A. above, they should eschew proposals that require warrants for the use of drones. Such prohibitions are overbroad and ill-advised.[50] Legislation that requires warrants for drones treats the information from a drone differently than information gathered from a manned aircraft, differently than that gathered by a police officer in a patrol car, or even from an officer on foot patrol. Under current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, police are not required to shield their eyes from wrongdoing until they have a warrant. Why impose such a requirement on the collection of information by drones?


Much of the anti-drone activists efforts are aimed at the threat of persistent and pervasive surveillance of the population by the government, an understandable fear. But what is an unreasonable fear, and should not work its way into legislation, is a ban on ordinary aerial observations that are only controversial because they take place with a remote controlled helicopter rather than a manned one. If anybody in a Cessna can see the pollution pouring from a factory, or if the police flying in a helicopter can see a cartel’s drug operations or human trafficking ring — and such observations can be admitted as evidence in a criminal trial, shouldn’t citizens and the police be able to make the same observations and expect that the evidence won’t be excluded merely because it is collected with a remote control aircraft?



For example, imagine a police officer was on patrol in her patrol car. While driving, she witnesses the car in front of her strike a pedestrian and speed off. Until witnessing the crime she did not have probable cause (the predicate level of suspicion for a warrant), or even reasonable suspicion (the predicate level of suspicion for a brief investigatory stop) to believe the vehicle in front of her would be involved in a crime. Let’s further assume that her dash camera recorded the entire incident. Nonetheless, that dashcam video may be used as evidence against the driver in a subsequent criminal proceeding. However, under broadly worded proposals that have been introduced in many state legislatures and the U.S. Congress, the same piece of evidence if gathered by a drone would be inadmissible in court because police did not have a warrant.



Consider another example. Police receive an anonymous tip that someone is growing marijuana in their backyard. A police officer attempts to view the backyard from the ground but his view is blocked by a 10 foot tall fence. The officer next decides to fly a commercially available remote controlled helicopter[51] over the backyard and from a vantage point that does not violate FAA regulations observes marijuana plants growing in the yard. This observation would be unlawful under proposals that require a warrant for observations from a drone. However, these facts are nearly identical to the facts in the Supreme Court’s 1986 California v. Ciraolo[52] decision which upheld aerial surveillance (discussed above). The only difference is that in Ciraolo, the officer flew over the backyard in an airplane, rather than using a drone. In fact, in Ciraolo the Court noted that not only would observation of the marijuana plants from the air (as described above) be lawful, police officers peering over the fence from the top of a police truck would also be behaving lawfully, and by extension, observation of the marijuana plants by police from the third floor of a neighboring home would also be lawful. But under proposals requiring a warrant for observations by a drone, this evidence would be inadmissible.

The examples above raise questions about what public policy goals are advanced by the suppression of evidence of a crime when documented by a drone, when the same evidence if recorded by a dashcam, observed from an airplane, or viewed from a neighboring home would be admissible in court. Such examples highlight the requiring warrants for evidence gathered by drones, when other methods of gathering the same evidence would not require a warrant.





Legislators should reject broadly worded use restrictions.


Some jurisdictions have enacted limitations on how information gathered from drones may be used. Legislators should reject these broadly worded use restrictions that prohibit the use of any evidence gathered by drones in nearly any proceeding. Such restrictions exceed the parameters of the Fourth Amendment and in some circumstances may only serve to protect criminals while not deterring governmental wrongdoing.

An onboard camera of a Draganflyer X6, six-rotor remote controlled helicopter which can fly up to 20 mph and travel up to a quarter mile away and 400 feet high, is pictured at the Grand Valley Model Airfield in Mesa County, Colorado on January 31, 2013. REUTERS/Chris FrancescaniFor example, the Alameda County California Sheriff’s Department proposed the use of small drones for: crime scene documentation, EOD missions, HAZMAT response, search and rescue, public safety and life preservation missions, disaster response, fire prevention, and documentation of a felony when such documentation is premised upon probable cause.[53] Linda Lyle, a privacy advocate with the ACLU criticized the proposal, stating: “If the sheriff wants a drone for search and rescue then the policy should say he can only use it for search and rescue…Unfortunately under his policy he can deploy a drone for search and rescue, but then use the data for untold other purposes. That is a huge loophole, it’s an exception that swallows the rule.”[54] Her points mirror the ACLU’s position in their December 2011 white paper where they state that drone use is acceptable so long as “the surveillance will not be used for secondary law enforcement purposes.”[55] It is also similar to the language used in other proposals prohibiting the use of information gathered by a drone “as evidence against an individual in any trial, hearing or other proceeding….”[56]




A simple hypothetical can help to illustrate the problem with this approach. Imagine that law enforcement uses a drone to search for a lost hiker in a state park. This is a search and rescue mission that fits within the public safety, emergency, or exigency exceptions in most legislative proposals aimed at controlling drone usage. However, imagine that during the course of the search the drone observed a man stabbing a woman to death in the park. That collection was entirely inadvertent, and as such suppressing the videotape of the stabbing would not serve to deter the police from using drones in the future as they were not searching for an unrelated stabbing crime, they were searching for a lost hiker. Yet, that evidence under the blanket use restrictions found in various proposals circulating in state legislatures, Congress, and under the ACLU’s “secondary law enforcement purposes” standard would need to be suppressed.[57]




Suppressing secondarily gathered evidence doesn’t protect privacy (as inadvertent discovery can’t be deterred); it merely protects a criminal who if observed from a helicopter, an airplane, or from the ground would face evidence of his crime, but under broadly worded drone focused privacy bills may be more difficult to prosecute. It is difficult to see what public policy goal is furthered by suppressing evidence of a crime merely because the evidence was gathered from a drone instead of a helicopter. Do legislators really want to be in the position of making it harder to punish perpetrators of violent crime? If the discovery were genuinely inadvertent, there is little to no deterrent value that justifies suppressing such evidence.




If legislators choose to impose a warrant requirement, they should codify existing exceptions.


If legislators seek to impose a statutory warrant requirement on the use of drones, they should codify exceptions to the warrant requirement and exclusionary rule that the courts have developed through decades of jurisprudence. Such codification could either state that existing exceptions to the warrant requirement apply to the statutory requirement of a warrant, or the statute could enumerate the exceptions that should apply.

A Phantom drone by DJI company, equipped with a camera, flies during the 4th Intergalactic Meeting of Phantom’s Pilots (MIPP) in an open secure area in the Bois de Boulogne, western Paris, March 16, 2014. REUTERS/Charles PlatiauAs the Supreme Court has noted, suppressing evidence has serious consequences for the “truth-seeking and law enforcement objectives” of our criminal justice system, and as such should present “a high obstacle for those urging [for its] application”[58] it should be “our last resort, not our first impulse.”[59] As such, the measure for when we should apply the exclusionary rule should not be whether a drone was used, but rather should be when “the benefits of deterrence…outweigh the costs.”[60] Some exceptions and other procedural devices that legislators should consider codifying are:



  • Rather than codify a blanket restriction on the use of any information gathered from a drone, legislators should codify a standing requirement that premises one’s ability to raise a suppression challenge on whether the person raising the suppression claim was the purported target of drone surveillance. Thus, if law enforcement uses a drone to document illegal dumping of toxic waste by Co-conspirator #1, non-present Co-conspirator #2’s privacy rights were not violated and #2 should not have the ability to vicariously assert #1’s privacy rights to protect himself from prosecution.
  • Evidence gathered by drones should be admissible in proceedings short of trial such as grand jury proceedings,[61] preliminary hearings,[62] bail hearings,[63] and other non-trial proceedings.
  • Evidence gathered by drones should be admissible for impeachment purposes as there is little deterrent value in keeping such impeachment evidence out of a trial (as law enforcement is unlikely to gather it solely for that purpose) and the use of evidence gathered by drones for such a limited purpose furthers the truth-seeking process and deters perjury.[64]
  • If legislators impose a statutory warrant requirement on the use of drones, it should also codify directly, or by reference the body of jurisprudence associated with the so-called good faith exception as articulated in United States v. Leon[65] and Massachusetts v. Sheppard.[66] The good faith exception allows for the admission of evidence gathered pursuant to a defective warrant, unless, based on objective facts, “a reasonably well trained officer would have known the search was illegal despite the magistrate’s authorization.”
  • Legislators should make clear that the independent source doctrine as articulated in Murray v. United States applies equally to drone related surveillance.[67] The independent source doctrine allows for the admission of evidence, despite police illegality, if the evidence seized was not causally linked to the illegal police conduct.
  • Legislators should codify the inevitable discovery rule articulated in Nix v. Williams.[68] In the context of drone surveillance, the rule would operate to allow the admission of drone gathered evidence in a criminal trial if the prosecutor can prove (by a preponderance of the evidence) that the evidence would have ultimately or inevitably been discovered by lawful means.[69]
  • Rather than suppress all fruit of drone surveillance, Legislators should codify the attenuation principles articulated in Nardone and Wong Sun.[70] The Court in Wong Sun stated that when considering whether fruit of an unlawful search should be suppressed, a court must ask “whether, granting establishment of the primary illegality, the evidence to which instant objection is made has been come at by exploitation of that illegality or instead by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint.” Stated differently, at some point the fruit of the poisonous tree loses its potency. Factors Legislators should consider codifying are: 1) passage of time between the illegal search and the acquisition of evidence; 2) intervening events and a lack of foreseeability that the illegal drone surveillance would result in the gathering of evidence; 3) whether the initial illegal surveillance was a flagrant or deliberate violation rather than an accidental one.[71]


Legislators should carefully define terminology and specify what places are entitled to privacy protection.


If legislators choose to prohibit certain types of surveillance, such as prohibiting drone surveillance, the legislative drafting task will become more difficult and the task of defining terminology will be critical. What a layperson sees when they read the word search or surveillance, what a legislator means when they write it, and what a court may think the legislature meant are all different things. As such, when using terms like search, surveillance, reasonable expectations, curtilage, private property, public place and other terms of art, legislators should specify what the terms mean.




What a layperson sees when they read the word search or surveillance, what a legislator means when they write it, and what a court may think the legislature meant are all different things.




This definitional task will be the most important part of the legislative drafting process as the terminology will drive what actions are allowable and what places are entitled to privacy protection. Legislators should consider adopting an entirely new set of definitions, and be prepared to reject existing terminology which may be confusing. A good example of a well thought out definitional approach is the proposed legislation offered by Professor Christopher Slobogin.[72] He uses the following terms:




  • “Search: An effort by government to find or discern evidence of unlawful conduct. A targeted search seeks to obtain information about a specific person or circumscribed place. A general search seeks to obtain information about people or places that are not targets at the time of the search.”
  • “Public search: A search of a place, in the absence of explicit consent, focused on activities or persons, limited to what the natural senses of a person on a lawful public vantage point could discern at the time of the search.”
  • “Probable cause: An articulable belief that a search will more likely than not produce contraband, fruit of crime, or other significant evidence of wrongdoing…”
  • “Reasonable suspicion: An articulable belief that a search will more likely than not lead to evidence of wrongdoing….”

A camera drone flown by Brian Wilson flies near the scene where two buildings were destroyed in an explosion, in the East Harlem section in New York City, March 12, 2014. REUTERS/Mike SegarConclusionThe emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles in domestic skies raises understandable privacy concerns that require careful and sometimes creative solutions. The smartest and most effective solution is to adopt a property rights approach that does not disrupt the status quo. Such an approach, coupled with time-based prohibitions on persistent surveillance, transparency, and data retention procedures will create the most effective and clear legislative package.



Legislators should reject alarmist calls that suggest we are on the verge of an Orwellian police state.

OH, REALLY, BROOKINGS?


Legislators should reject alarmist calls that suggest we are on the verge of an Orwellian police state.[73] In 1985, the ACLU argued in an amicus brief filed in California v. Ciraolo that police observation from an airplane was “invasive modern technology” and upholding the search of Ciraolo’s yard would “alter society’s very concept of privacy.” Later, in 1988, the ACLU argued in Florida v. Riley that allowing police surveillance by helicopter was “Orwellian” and “would expose all Americans, their homes and effects, to highly intrusive snooping by government agents…” In a different context in 2004 (before the advent of the iPhone) police in Boston were going to use Blackberry phones to access public databases (the equivalent of Googling). Privacy advocates decried the use of these handheld phones as “mass scrutiny of the lives and activities of innocent people,” and “a violation of the core democratic principle that the government should not be permitted to violate a person’s privacy, unless it has a reason to believe that he or she is involved in wrongdoing.”[74] Reactionary claims such as these get the public’s attention and are easy to make, but have the predicted harms come true? Is the sky truly falling? We should be careful to not craft hasty legislation based on emotionally charged rhetoric.



Outright bans on the use of drones and broadly worded warrant requirements that function as the equivalent of an outright ban do little to protect privacy or public safety and in some instances will only serve to protect criminal wrongdoing. Legislators should instead enact legislation that maintains the current balance between legitimate surveillance and individuals’ privacy rights. The best way to achieve that goal is to follow a property centric approach, coupled with limits on pervasive surveillance, enhanced transparency measures, and data protection procedures.


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As a Baltimore citizen who is looking to the sky day and night following these EYES IN THE SKY -----as always we are being told these policies which will lead to TOTALITARIANISM----are nowhere near operational. They are not watching our every move---and the visuals recorded cannot even identify open street violence-----bodies being thrown in our Baltimore Harbor-----they are good for helping police with high-speed car chases.



'The Arnolds donated the money to the Baltimore Community Foundation, a nonprofit that administers donations to a wide range of local civic causes.
In January, McNutt opened the office above the parking garage. The only sign greeting visitors is a piece of copy paper taped to the door that reads “Community Support Program.”'

The technology needing more advancement is this: just as with security cameras we attach to our small businesses or homes recording day after day having to erase video after a month or so----there is not yet the ability to use MEGA-DATA in an organized fashion to act PROACTIVELY----or to give the resolution needed for any legitimate identification.
So, as global banking 1% MOVE FORWARD as hard as they can the ability to track every movement of every 99% of US WE THE PEOPLE there is no oversight of global banking 1% LYING, CHEATING, STEALING, CREATING FAKE CIVIL UNREST, BEING THE SOURCE OF DRUG AND GUN-RUNNING which is of course the source of our US city violence and street crime.



THESE EYES IN THE SKY CANNOT SEE/ARE NOT LOOKING FOR THE GORILLA-IN-THE-ROOM CRIMINALS.


Raytheon's Persistent Surveillance and Dissemination System of Systems (PSDS2)


Persistent Surveillance Systems - Northrop Grumman


Every time we read about MOVING FORWARD DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE operational policy it is followed by the PREFACE-------IT'S REALLY EASY TO SEE HOW THIS TECHNOLOGY CAN BE ABUSED.




We will FIX BALTIMORE by getting rid of all global banking 5% pols and players SACKING AND LOOTING OUR treasuries, people's pockets, public assets-------and these are the same people working really hard to install what we already KNOW will be TOTALITARIAN policing and security structures. The employees being called POLICE are tied to global military corporations we see yet we do not see our local public service police department employees required to operate under US RULE OF LAW protecting our CIVIL RIGHTS as AMERICAN CITIZENS.


youtube.com
Persistent Surveillance Systems Pre-Crime Aerial Panopticon Watches City-Wide Area,Tracking Everyone
02/05/2014 From 10,000 feet up, tracking an entire…


Combat-proven, video-based persistent surveillance systems configurable with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aerostats and ground-based sensors. Provides the instant response and multi-level integration for the persistent surveillance necessary to counter today's threats.



Countering today's asymmetric threats, which can occur at any time and place, requires reliable, cost-effective persistent surveillance systems and decision making tools. Raytheon's Persistent Surveillance and Dissemination System of Systems (PSDS2) provides high quality video from multiple sensors and the associated metadata to support real-time monitoring, decision making, and forensic analysis. PSDS2 is a combat-proven, integrated suite of sensing, visualization and communication components built on a flexible architecture to support dynamic mission needs.

________________________________________________

Here is our US BENEDICT ARNOLD and global banking 1% -----in FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES overseas------installing the same TOTALITARIAN SMART CITIES DEEP STATE  in China.  We would expect to see far-right wing, authoritarian, militaristic, extreme wealth extreme poverty FORGET-ABOUT RIGHTS OR DEMOCRACY CHINA installing this same global military policing and security overseas------BUT NOT HERE IN THE UNITED STATES where everything about these surveillance technologies ARE ILLEGAL ---UNCONSTITUTIONAL ----and driven by global banking 1% sacking and looting our US treasuries of hundreds of trillions of dollars----working hard to end our US SOVEREIGNTY with goals of making all US 99% WE THE PEOPLE----COLONIAL ENTITIES.

No doubt MOVING FORWARD will see global banking 1% OUTSOURCE EYE IN SKY to these foreign global Chinese military surveillance corporations.



'And in fact, the United States has a higher per capita penetration rate of surveillance cameras than China, with about 62 million in 2016'.

The eye in the sky is getting smarter, especially in China



By Elisabeth Eaves, January 11, 2018



Authoritarian governments and leaders have always aspired to a high degree of control over citizens’ lives, but for a long time, technological limits put their dreams out of reach. Criminals and dissidents could hide in plain sight, lost in the anonymity of big cities. Human security staff could make mistakes, fall asleep, or get recruited to the other side.




Today, the merging of several cutting-edge technologies is transforming what it is possible for a government or police force to do. Facial-recognition software has been around for a while, getting more practical and accurate every year. But simply recognizing a face isn’t much use when you don’t know anything about its owner. Now Washington Post China Bureau Chief Simon Denyer reports on an ambitious Chinese plan called “Sharp Eyes.” It integrates facial recognition technology with an existing network of security cameras to create a single nationwide surveillance platform, ultimately linking up to “a vast database of information on every citizen, a ‘Police Cloud’ that aims to scoop up such data as criminal and medical records, travel bookings, online purchase and even social media comments — and link it to everyone’s identity card and face.”





To be sure, the United States, Russia, and many other countries are also incorporating facial-recognition software into security cameras. And in fact, the United States has a higher per capita penetration rate of surveillance cameras than China, with about 62 million in 2016.



What appears to differentiate China are its goals. In addition to chasing criminals, it aims to use its surveillance system to track social activists, dissidents, and even monitor entire ethnic groups, such as the Uighur Muslims of Xinjiang province. A researcher at Human Rights Watch told the Post that what sets China apart is “‘a complete lack of effective privacy protections,’ combined with a system that is explicitly designed to target individuals seen as ‘politically threatening.’”


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Having SECRET COURTS rule against continuous violations of US civil laws 5 ----10 years after the fact with US 99% WE THE PEOPLE having no idea whether these issues brought forward even touched the ICEBERG of abuses ----has become so systemic as to assure absolutely NONE of those BROOKINGS suggestions as POLICY LAWS pretending to protect from OVER-REACH is believable.
The REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE stance on DEEP, DEEP, REALLY DEEP STATE is to STOP/VOID all these surveillance policies but in place these few decades and return to rebuilding our strong US civil policing and justice system actually hiring citizens to community policing forces and restore policing the GORILLA-IN-THE-ROOM OFFENDERS-----corporations, criminal politicians, global banking.

Don't worry says global banking 1%--we have a secret court to make sure all this does not become TOTALITARIAN!


Secret court rebukes NSA for 5-year illegal surveillance of U.S. citizensBy Tim Johnson

May 26, 2017 06:37 PM
Updated May 26, 2017 06:37 PM

WASHINGTON
U.S. intelligence agencies conducted illegal surveillance on American citizens over a five-year period, a practice that earned them a sharp rebuke from a secret court that called the matter a “very serious” constitutional issue.
The criticism is in a lengthy secret ruling that lays bare some of the frictions between the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and U.S. intelligence agencies obligated to obtain the court’s approval for surveillance activities.
The ruling, dated April 26 and bearing the label “top secret,” was obtained and published Thursday by the news site Circa.
It is rare that such rulings see the light of day, and the lengthy unraveling of issues in the 99-page document opens a window on how the secret federal court oversees surveillance activities and seeks to curtail those that it deems overstep legal authority.
The document, signed by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, said the court had learned in a notice filed Oct. 26, 2016, that National Security Agency analysts had been conducting prohibited queries of databases “with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the court.”
It said a judge chastised the NSA’s inspector general and Office of Compliance for Operations for an “institutional ‘lack of candor’ ” for failing to inform the court. It described the matter as “a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, and is a constitutional bedrock protection against intrusion.
Parts of the ruling were redacted, including sections that give an indication of the extent of the illegal surveillance, which the NSA told the court in a Jan. 3 notice was partly the fault of “human error” and “system design issues” rather than intentional illegal searches.
The NSA inspector general’s office tallied up the number of prohibited searches conducted in a three-month period in 2015, but the number of analysts who made the searches and the number of queries were blacked out in the ruling.
The NSA gathers communications in ways known as “upstream” and “downstream” collection. Upstream collection occurs when data are captured as they move through massive data highways – the internet backbone – within the United States. Downstream collection occurs as data move outside the country along fiber optic cables and satellite links.
Data captured from both upstream and downstream sources are stored in massive databases, available to be searched when analysts need to, often months or as much as two years after the captures took place.
The prohibited searches the court mentioned involved NSA queries into the upstream databanks, which constitute a fraction of all the data NSA captures around the globe but are more likely to contain the emails and phone calls of people in the United States.
Federal law empowers the NSA and CIA to battle foreign terrorist actions against the United States by collecting the electronic communications of targets believed to be outside the country. While communications of U.S. citizens or residents may get hoovered up in such sweeps, they are considered “incidental” and must be “minimized” – removing the identities of Americans – before broader distribution.
The court filing noted an NSA decision March 30 to narrow collection of “upstream” data within the United States. Under that decision, the NSA acknowledged that it had erred in sweeping up the communications of U.S. citizens or residents but said those errors “were not willful.” Even so, the NSA said it would no longer collect certain kinds of data known as “about” communications, in which a U.S. citizen was merely mentioned.
The NSA announced that change publicly on April 28, two days after the court ruling, saying the agency would limit its sweeps to communications either directly to or from a foreign intelligence target. That change would reduce “the likelihood that NSA will acquire communications of U.S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with one of the agency’s foreign intelligence targets.”
The court document also criticized the FBI’s distribution of intelligence data, saying it had disclosed raw surveillance data to sectors of its bureaucracy “largely staffed by private contractors.”

The “contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI’s requests,” it said, adding that the bureau discontinued the practice on April 18, 2016.



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August 15th, 2018

8/15/2018

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We will take one more day looking at health care industry regarding operational public policy.  Obama era Affordable Care Act as we discuss often ENDED the status of MEDICARE as a public trust ----making it completely a PRIVATE INSURANCE CORPORATION.  When we discuss health insurance public policy today we are looking at MEDICARE being the same as PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE policy.  Yesterday we showed how HEALTH RANKINGS PER STATE are skewed with FAKE DATA because of CHEATING---LYING----to increase PROFITS for what are now global health systems with global health insurance corporations partnered with consolidated health industry branches.  When a national news media and a global health corporation release data showing CHARTS of rankings-------the column always labelled COST SAVINGS----has nothing to do with cost to consumers-----it says this state saves health costs to global corporations ergo, provides higher global health system PROFITS. 


'Observation Classification
Medicare’s recent adoption of penalties for readmissions offered hospitals a new incentive to shift some patients returning within 30 days of their discharge to observation status. A patient stay labeled “observation” doesn’t count as a readmission, allowing hospitals that might otherwise be fined for having too many readmissions to skirt the penalty'.

The structure of keeping patients as OUTPATIENTS rather than INPATIENTS has been discussed in detail.  For our US seniors trying to use PRE-PAID MEDICARE SAVINGS ACCOUNTS----we are seeing more and more seniors being pushed to OUTPATIENT status for ordinary health procedures.  Below we see the reason-----seniors pay higher CO-PAYS AND DEDUCTIBLES for out-patient added to rising costs of MEDICARE INSURANCE PREMIUMS.  So, basically, our US seniors are getting NONE OF THEIR HEALTH SAVINGS from MEDICARE ----global health systems are simply being allowed to design operations that will have seniors footing as much costs as any 99% citizen with a private health insurance plan.




'But the patient loses since the cost sharing requirements for outpatient services are much higher than they are for inpatient. But then who ever said that health care reform was to benefit patients'?

The health rankings per state saying MASSACHUSETTS for example ranks top in COST SAVINGS----means it has installed structures that maximize global health system PROFITS----at the expense of its 99% of MA citizens especially its SENIORS.


Should You Waive Copayments?


One of the most consistently asked questions is, should I waive copayments when requested by a patient?

Usually the patient will tell you that their other physicians and therapists waive their copayment so you should also waive copayments for them. Many times, they will also ask you to waive their deductibles, especially in the beginning of the year when most deductible reset. This is especially true now that copays and deductibles are increasing to their highest rates in history as insurance companies try to minimize their expenses.




The best advice is to not waive copayments as a practice policy. Medicare allows you to waive copayments under certain circumstances. Private payers generally do not allow you to waive copayments. Be sure to check your contract with each payer to make sure what their policy is for waiving copayments. The consequences can put your practice in jeopardy.



Should you waive copayments for Medicare patients?


Most Medicare policies concerning the treatment of copayments and deductibles are included in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Before HIPAA, Medicare treated copayments and deductibles similar to private payers.


HIPAA concluded that free services are likely to influence a patient to receive some other paid services  and should be considered a form of remuneration. Since offering remuneration to patients is illegal, waiving copayments and deductibles are illegal. However, HIPAA did allow certain waivers to remuneration to patients and allow practices to waive copayments and deductibles if:




  • The waiver is not offered as part of any advertisement of solicitation.
  • The practice does not routinely waive copayments or deductible amounts.
  • The practice waives the copayments or deductible amounts after:
    • The patient can show financial hardship. Financial Hardship should be defined by the practice in a written policy and must be applied equally to all patients.
    • The practice fails to collect copay or deductible amounts after making reasonable collection efforts.
    • A health plan type of waiver not applicable to individual or group providers.


So, under Medicare, if you occasionally waive copayments to those who can demonstrate financial hardship, you will be within the law. But you cannot routinely waive copayments or advertise that you waive copayments. So when a Medicare patient asks you to waive your copayments, you should inform them that this practice is illegal

Should you waive copayments for Private Payer patients?


When Private Payer Insurance Companies set a copayment or deductible amount as part of their Insured’s policy, they are counting on the copayment or deductible to cause a pattern of behavior. Simply stated, high copays are designed to make sure the patient goes to the doctor when they have a real problem, not every time they have an ache or pain. Similarly, high deductibles are designed to make sure the patient gets treated and released from care instead of using their health insurance for maintenance treatments. If you agree to waive copayments or deductibles, you are removing the incentives set by the insurance company and may be increasing the amount of care to the patient and the cost to the insurance company. This might be considered fraud based on your contract with the insurance company.



Most private payers do not allow you to waive copayments or deductibles.


It is always best to check your contract to see if you are allowed to waive these fees and under what circumstances you are allowed to waive these fees. If you want to reduce the fees paid by the patient, the best way to do this would be to reduce your fee so both the patient and the insurance company pay less. This will not reduce any copayments that must be collected at full value. If the patient is truly having financial hardship, you may decide to treat the patient pro-bono. Again, you should check your contract with the private payer to make sure this is allowed and you should have written practice policy that is uniformly administered to all patients.




Conclusion – Do NOT waive copayments



When a patient asks you to waive their copayments or deductibles, it is best to inform them that this practice is illegal and not endorsed by you nor your practice. If they threaten to go to another therapist who will waive their copay or deductible, you are better off letting them go to another therapist. On top of the legal issues, you are also working for free or greatly reduced fees when you waive copays and deductibles. Wouldn’t you rather have a patient paying his fair share rather than a patient receiving free services? You owe it to yourself and your practice to be fiscally responsible and protect it from possible fraud charges by refusing to waive copayments unless it is justified by financial hardship.

___________________________________________




Our US seniors are now paying a private annual Medicare premium ranging as any private health insurance plan from $1000-2000 a year AND seeing co--pay and deductible costs rise. The cost to health system for out-patient may be LOWER---COST---but the cost to consumers are rising.

This same dynamic of course hits our 99% of WE THE PEOPLE having to purchase PRIVATE health insurance.  The operational structures that are soaking SENIORS through MEDICARE are soaking our adults with private plans.

Below we see 2018 news article----printed after MASSACHUSETTS was ranked top in HEALTH COSTS----shouting that those cost savings are sure not hitting consumers or businesses made to supply health insurance to employees.  Now, businesses will not have long to complain because AFFORDABLE CARE ACT has a goal MOVING FORWARD of having all 99% of US WE THE PEOPLE on a WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION UNITED NATIONS global labor pool third world structure of health care.  Businesses will not offer health plans-----and citizens will simply have preventative care offered at any FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE OVERSEAS.

How does MASSACHUSETTS contain COSTS to health systems to rank #1?  Remember, MA has its own global hedge fund IVY LEAGUE medical corporation ---in HARVARD'S MA GENERAL-----not PUBLIC.  This global health system operates just as MAYO CLINIC----JOHNS HOPKINS----having nothing to do with US quality health care access----totally a PROFITEERING GLOBAL HEALTH SYSTEM.  No matter how many times these global health systems say THEY DO NO HARM----they are killing our US 99% with lack of access today especially our US seniors.


Harvard Medical School


Massachusetts General Hospital is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, where nearly all of our physicians are faculty members.

For almost two centuries, Mass General has been affiliated with Harvard Medical School. The hospital also serves as a site for the principal clinical experience as well as a number of other clerkships. Mass General is committed to ensuring that Harvard Medical School students have a positive educational experience and achieve their objectives while rotating through the hospital.


BIZJOURNAL and this smiling face representing BUSINESSES having to insure employees KNOW corporations will not be doing so VERY SOON.  We can keep allowing global banking 1% to PRETEND they are building a developed nation US quality health system when really building third world FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE structures ----but why not GET RID OF ALL GLOBAL BANKING 5% FREEMASON/GREEK players pushing all these policies forward!


Government & Regulations EDITORIAL/OPINION

Viewpoint: Mass. health care legislation must contain costs for employers, consumers



By Matt Hollister / Christopher Carlozzi – CEO, Hollister Insurance Brokerage Inc. /

State Director, National Federation of Independent Business

Jul 20, 2018, 5:39am



In a recent poll, Massachusetts voters were rightly proud of what the commonwealth has done to lead the nation in ensuring people have access to high-quality health care. But they are understandably concerned about our inability — so far — to effectively control ever-rising health care costs.

WE NEVER BELIEVE MARYLAND POLLS---DON'T BELIEVE MASS POLLS ------



Employers share these concerns.


Rising health care costs impact an employer’s ability to offer raises and other benefits to workers and limit the ability to grow companies and hire additional staff. Rising costs also make it harder for Massachusetts employers to compete for talent with employers from other states; those employers can offer higher wages because health care costs are not eating into their bottom lines. While the Massachusetts economy is strong, Massachusetts employers’ confidence is down in June due to an impending trade war with China and key U.S. trading partners, along with recent legislative initiatives related to family-and-medical leave, an increase in the minimum wage, and a new assessment on Massachusetts employers to fund shortfalls in MassHealth.



Massachusetts employers had this new assessment imposed on them with the understanding that Gov. Baker’s proposed MassHealth reforms would be taken up by the Massachusetts House and Senate in health care cost-control legislation moving on Beacon Hill. Unfortunately, the House and Senate have failed to address significant reforms to MassHealth. The unsustainable growth in this program prevents investments in other important priorities, such as improving the state’s transportation system and ensuring our kids are getting the best education they can. The bills also do little to control overall health care costs and, in fact, will raise costs, driving premiums even higher. This is a sad commentary on our efforts to control health care spending in the commonwealth, and it underscores the urgent need to rein in the growth of MassHealth.

The most costly and troubling parts of the House and Senate bills are the attempts to address the issue of price variation — the differences in what hospitals are paid. Each house’s solutions will raise premiums for employers and consumers and should be rejected by the conference committee.



The issue of price variation has been well documented in our marketplace, with Massachusetts having far greater differences in what hospitals get paid than almost any other state. Attorney General Martha Coakley first documented the issue of price variation more than eight years ago, when she noted that certain hospitals use brand, size and geographic isolation to drive higher prices, with no correlation to quality or patient acuity. For Massachusetts health plans and employers, this and subsequent reports documented the need for more market-based tools to help health plans drive care to lower-cost providers.

THIS IS WHY BIZJOURNAL PUBLISHED THIS COMMENT FROM A CONCERNED BUSINESS OWNER-----STATING THE NEED FOR MORE MARKET-BASED TOOLS---MARKET-BASED TOOLS ARE WHAT HAS US HEALTH CARE COSTS AND FRAUDS SOARING.

For community hospitals paid on the low end, they have advocated a statutory rate floor — a minimum amount that hospitals could be paid in Massachusetts. This could add $180 million annually in new health care spending. Without an offset to account for the added costs, such a proposal is exactly the wrong solution, as Massachusetts already has among the highest health care costs in the nation, second only to Alaska. This proposal will only exacerbate that distinction.

COMMUNITY HOSPITALS PAID AT LOW END WHILE GLOBAL HEALTH SYSTEMS LIKE HARVARD GET HIGH END FUNDING-----HOW ANTI-FREE MARKET IS THAT??????

While the House bill does not establish a rate floor, per se, the legislation includes a provision establishing a one-time assessment, originally pegged at a staggering $450 million in new money and then reduced to $330 million before leaving the House floor. This assessment would be paid mostly by the state’s not-for-profit health insurers, and in smaller part by the highest-paid hospitals. While there are criteria to help prioritize funding among hospitals, there is no requirement that community hospitals meet any quality-improvement metrics or patient satisfaction criteria. The bill’s language says that the assessments can’t be passed on to employers by way of increased rates, but such a promise is illusory.



With most of the local health plans having operating losses due to the changing landscape of the Affordable Care Act, rising drugs prices and new technologies, health plans will indeed be allowed to build these assessments into premiums if they face solvency concerns, and can also pass them on to self-insured customers as part of fees. Placing a reserves assessment on carriers is dangerous public policy. Reserves are statutorily required and are in place to protect consumers, employers, employees, hospitals, doctors and vendors if a plan has unexpected losses.
Health plan reserves should not be used to fund unrelated activities.



The House bill does nothing to address documented price variation. The bill simply awards vast sums of money to community hospitals, with no requirement that they seek to improve care. Make no mistake about it: This provision will indeed increase costs for employers and consumers and will risk destabilizing the health care sector. It should be rejected.



The Senate bill will also increase costs — it establishes a minimum payment for hospitals, but because it fails to offset costs with a maximum payment to hospitals, this one provision could after three years add at least $265 million in new spending, raising health insurance rates to over $1 billion in five years.



To date, the efforts put forward by the House and Senate have failed to contain health care costs, and, if significant changes are not made to the bills currently in conference committee, employers and consumers will continue to see costs rise, with no relief in sight.


On behalf of the employers we serve, we recommend that any effort to address price variation be done sensibly and be cost neutral. For instance, if hospitals are paid a statutory minimum amount, it must be linked with a rate ceiling so that any increase for low-paid providers is offset by cost savings accrued from the highest-paid providers. In this way, we can be assured that costs will not increase for employers and consumers. A target growth cap like that in the Senate proposal is not sufficient in this regard. The conferees must also not include language granting all hospitals a rate increase if one hospital gets a rate increase, and they must close loopholes to ensure that hospitals in wealthy systems aren’t unjustly enriched by these new provisions.



Any final proposal must promote competition and not destabilize our health plans or others in the health sector.


We will continue to oppose health care cost-control legislation that actually increases costs for employers and consumers and jeopardizes Massachusetts’ competitiveness. 
____________________________________________




When TEXAS global banking 1% BUSH/CLINTON neo-liberals/neo-cons being very proud the 99% of Texas citizens are not covered by health insurance because they cannot afford health insurance in TEXAS----it is for two reasons.  First, Texas is most aggressive in filling the state with global labor pool immigrants not earning enough to purchase private insurance ----not qualifying for MEDICARE OR MEDICAID----all while paying PAYROLL TAXES funding both programs.  TEXAS allows its global labor pool immigrant workers to be covered by WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION UNITED NATIONS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE preventative care only health insurance.  No matter how loudly states like CA, MD, MA, NY pretend they are covering our new to US 99% immigrants ---they are not.  As Texas, all states saying immigrants are receiving MEDICAID are actually simply accessing WORLD HEALTH GLOBAL LABOR POOL insurance coverage.


Below we see what all US 99% WE THE PEOPLE know-----most US citizens are paying through one operational structure or another------$10,000 a year on health care.  That is AMAZING and it is pure PROFITEERING.



"the average American spent $9,596 on healthcare" in 2012, which was "up significantly from $7,700 in 2007."

We are seeing US health care costs to CONSUMERS sky-rocketing as STATE RANKINGS FOR HEALTH COSTS rank lower costs to global health systems meaning higher PROFITS.  Now, our US 99% are seeing wages driven to third world levels even white collar professionals being pushed to what is for US LIVING WAGE poverty line----$30,000 ---40,000 with most US citizens around $20,000.  Those former global banking 5% freemason/Greeks having spent a few decades on SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY are given less than $20,000.




"Health care spending per person is expected to surpass $10,000 in 2016 and then march steadily higher to $14,944 in 2023."


For most US 99 % adults----cost of health care insurance is half or more of annual income.  So, $15,000 a year in 2023-----what is that to US citizens earning a few hundred thousand?  Well, if our global banking 5% freemason/Greek players think they will still be earning that much in MOVING FORWARD BACK TO DARK AGES-----we have swampland in Florida to sell.



Here's how much the average American spends on health care


Ester Bloom
10:52 AM ET Fri, 23 June 2017


The House's version of the health care bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, was at last unveiled on Wednesday, with profound and far-reaching potential repercussions for how Americans are able to access and afford health insurance. Currently, Americans pay $3.4 trillion a year for medical care (and, unfortunately, don't get impressive results).

What the average American spends a year


According to the most recent data available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), "the average American spent $9,596 on healthcare" in 2012, which was "up significantly from $7,700 in 2007."


It was also more than twice the per capita average of other developed nations, but still, in 2015, experts predicted continued sharp increases: "Health care spending per person is expected to surpass $10,000 in 2016 and then march steadily higher to $14,944 in 2023."



Indeed, average annual costs per person hit $10,345 in 2016. In 1960, the average cost per person was only $146 — and, adjusting for inflation, that means costs are nine times higher now than they were then.


Here's how that breaks down



According to eHealthInsurance, for unsubsidized customers in 2016, "premiums for individual coverage averaged $321 per month while premiums for family plans averaged $833 per month. The average annual deductible for individual plans was $4,358 and the average deductible for family plans was $7,983."

That means that, last year, the average family paid $9,996 for coverage alone, and, if they met their deductible, a total of just under $18,000. Meanwhile, an average individual spent $3,852 on coverage and, if she spent another $4,358 to meet her deductible, a total of $8,210.



These figures do not take into account any additional co-insurance responsibility she might have. In addition to co-pays and deductibles, an increasing number of plans now require co-insurance payments, which require that, even once you meet your deductible, you continue paying some percentage of all costs until you hit your out-of-pocket maximum.



How age factors in


Young people, who are expected to benefit from lower premiums should the GOP repeal-and-replace efforts succeed, already pay the least. But even their costs can be considerable, depending on where they live. In 2016, the financial data site ValuePenguin found that the average costs for coverage for a 21-year-old go from $180 a month in Utah, plus a $2,160 deductible (potentially $4,320 a year, total), to $426 a month in Alaska, with a $5,112 deductible (potentially $10,224 a year, total).



As a reminder, 72 percent of young millennials, aged 18-24, have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts and 31 percent have nothing saved at all.


_________________________________

What OBAMA and Clinton neo-liberals call HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS for young adults are simply the same PAYROLL TAXES our baby boomers paid for several decades now unable to access those health savings accounts.  So, all this will hit our young adults growing older much harder than hitting our aging baby boomers seniors today----all this lack of access will eliminate US developed nation health care quality care for 99% of our US WE THE PEOPLE black, white, and brown citizens MOVING FORWARD health care for only the global 1% and their 2%.  This statement below is INSULTING---as if any amount of health savings a young adult could accumulate will transfer to actual quality health access.


'As a reminder, 72 percent of young millennials, aged 18-24, have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts and 31 percent have nothing saved at all'.



This week's discussion on operational public policy simply wants to show the mechanisms global banking 5% freemason/Greek player pols are installing NOW while using terms called COST SAVINGS-----making it sound like consumer savings while that stat is looking as global health system cost savings MAXIMIZING CORPORATE PROFITS.

MARYLAND ranks top in COST SAVINGS for the above reasons----it ranks LOW on ACCESS for those same reasons.  VA, DE, WA, CA all rank LOW on ACCESS for these same reasons.  All global banking 1% Clinton neo-liberal states looking just like TEXAS---only FAKING THE DATA.


Let's look at the OUTCOMES RANKING ----ask HAWAII how it is tops in COST SAVINGS for global health system profits-----ranked LOW in ACCESS but somehow creates FAKE DATA saying its OUTCOMES are top?  We can ask raging global banking 1% Clinton neo-liberal GABBARD pretending to be OUR REVOLUTION populist leader while being that OUR REVOLUTION for only the global 1%----you know, just like Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein.  We see VT and MA home of Bernie and Jill with these same DATA SKEWS.

One of the biggest factors in HEALTH OUTCOME is driven by massive and systemic frauds and corruption still allowed to soar especially for our low income citizens which of course represent a super-majority of our US citizens----growing to US 99% of citizens black, white, and brown citizens. 




by Mark Reutter12:53 pmAug 10, 2018
Millions misused by former manager at Baltimore Social Services, audit alleges

Period covered by the audit coincides with the tenure of agency head Molly McGrath Tierney, who resigned last August


The OUTCOMES are FAKE DATA because the criminality in our public health system is still raging----whether MA, CA, WA, IL----or TX, AL, FL.......OUTCOMES cannot be happening when communities are not receiving social services spending.  We discussed this a few days ago as above.


What Are Population Health Outcomes?


Many health improvement models have identified two broad outcome goals: increasing overall or mean population health and eliminating disparities within the population. The outcomes component of our population health model is shown in the left hand side of the figure below (1,2).


 

For overall or mean population health, two components are displayed: mortality (length of life), and health-related quality of life, or morbidity. Healthy People 2010 defined health-related quality of life as "a personal sense of physical and mental health and the ability to react to factors in the physical and social environments (3)." Simply put, one goal of population health improvement is to increase years of life and the quality of those life years.



Another goal is to reduce the differences or disparities in these health outcomes among different subgroups in the population (4). The figure indicates a number of subgroups that are associated with significant differences or disparities in both mortality and health-related quality of life. Those featured here are race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and geography. Many other subgroups besides these are associated with population health disparities. All differences are not necessarily of policy interest or are equally important in all situations (5).
 
It is important to note that in this figure each quadrant is arbitrarily sized equally, as are the components within disparities (i.e., race/ethnicity, SES, geography, and gender). The relative importance of each cell is not a research question but a value choice for different nations, states, or other population groups to make. Some may focus more on years of life and others more on the quality of those years. Some may think that socioeconomic disparities are the most important while others could prioritize disparities of gender or geography. In the Health of Wisconsin Report Card, an overall grade for health disparity was given based on a multidomain index across four disparity domains (6).


____________________________________________



How in the world do we get OUTCOME data in US when all oversight and accountability structures in health care have been dismantled by AFFORDABLE CARE ACT and we are told these global health systems will SELF-REGULATE?

While US citizens are being told they now need to buy PHARMA insurance since MEDICARE is being dismantled without MEDICARE PART D----PHARMA-----US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES as all US cities will operate as those overseas----and there will be NO regulation of global health systems OR global PHARMA----they will simply release FAKE DATA saying everything is SUCCESSFUL

Today's US national media and national NGOs tied to writing health care articles are using data direct from the same global health systems and PHARMA having spent these few decades of ROBBER BARON FRAUDS----believe HEALTH OUTCOME DATA?  OH, REALLY???????


We'll believe in SANTA and the TOOTH FAIRY ---but not a deregulated global health system allowed to create corporate DATA.

US drug pricing: could the industry regulate itself?

Pharmaceutical price hikes are nothing new, but increased criticism has instilled a new sense of social responsibility, at least for some companies. Chris Lo considers whether industry self-regulation could play a larger role in future US drug pricing


Back in September 2016, with the US presidential election in full swing and drug prices high on the public agenda, Allergan made an announcement that showed something rare in the pharmaceutical industry – restraint on prices.

Allergan CEO Brent Saunders emphasised the ‘social contract’ it shares with patients – patients understand the cost of developing new drugs, so the contract goes, and drug makers acknowledge that medicines must be priced in a way that makes them accessible to those who need them.

OH, REALLY MR SAUNDERS?  WE KNOW THE PUBLIC WANTS PUBLIC RESEARCH CREATING PHARMA AS ALL LAST CENTURY LEADING TO COST-CONTAINING PRICES-----WE SEE NO 'SOCIAL CONTRACT' WITH GLOBAL PHARMA.


“Those who have taken aggressive or predatory price increases have violated this social contract,” Saunders wrote in a blog at the time. “I don’t like what is happening, and despite the fact that it is hard to speak out publicly on this, now is the time to take action to spell out what this social contract means to me.”


Making friends and influencing people:

Allergan’s 10% price cap 
So what does the pharma-patient social contract mean to Saunders and Allergan? On drug prices, the short version is that the company has made a commitment to limit price increases on its drugs to once a year, and each increase will be restricted to no more than 10%. The company also pledged to not needlessly hike prices on drugs that are approaching the end of patent protection.



Saunders’ comments generated a wave of good publicity for Allergan, and as this year’s January drug price increases have shown, the firm’s self-imposed 10% price increase cap has caught on in the industry more widely. Allergan itself raised prices across its portfolio at a rate of 9.7% or less, but others have followed suit. Amgen upped the price tag on its blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel by 9.7%, and the likes of AbbVie, Teva, Cellectis and Insys also kept price hikes under 10%.

“In 2017 and at the beginning of this year, we have seen companies restricting the price hikes, and especially at the beginning of this year sticking to Allergan’s pledge,” says GlobalData healthcare analyst Alice Stevens. “From 2013 to 2015, the average price increase was 20% a year for pharmaceutical products, whereas the average price increase this year was 8.7%.”


So what does this voluntary 10% limit mean in practice, and can the industry persuade the American people and political system that it can be trusted to self-regulate on pricing?

IT MEANS 99% WE THE PEOPLE DO NOT BELIEVE A WORD OF SKEWED CORPORATE DATA.



Staving off government-imposed price controls

While the Allergan-led price hike limit might have curtailed US price increases for now, critics have argued that a 10% annual limit doesn’t necessarily translate to true restraint, and only seems so in comparison to the excesses of the past.



“The 10% price increase limit is problematic, given that a drug can double in price in seven years with 10% annual price increases,” says Dr Walid Gellad, associate professor of health policy at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. “We do not want to condone 9.9% annual price increases as reasonable in any way. Right now it's hard to know if industry gestures are making a difference versus just seeing regression to the mean – in terms of slower price increases – after a few years of large increases.”



Will Holley, spokesman for the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing (CSRxP), which campaigns for reduced drug prices on behalf of American physicians, hospitals and health insurers, agrees.



“10%, or 9.9% or whatever it might be, price increases are ten times CPI [consumer price index] inflation, so it’s tough to see that as restraint. Maybe a 10% increase in the price of aspirin isn’t a huge impact, but if you look at Humira for example, the best-selling drug in the world, it’s been estimated that the 9.X% price increase that AbbVie took on it this year is going to cost the US healthcare system a billion dollars. So the percentage doesn’t always tell the whole story.”

Pharma price capping is more a product of political expediency than a social contract



The price rises of some players that haven’t subscribed to Allergan’s social contract – Pfizer and Celgene increased their prices by 19.8% and 27.5%, respectively, in 2017 – reveal the limitations of piecemeal industry self-regulation. For many observers the price cap, conceived at a time when outrage over price gouging was threatening to reach critical mass, represents a savvy, PR-driven move to pre-empt the possibility of more far-reaching drug price reform at the federal level.



“The pharma industry has this self-enforced price hike cap, and it’s hoping it’s enough to avoid legislative reform,” says Stevens. “I think as the year goes on, revenues might take a hit – then we may see a lot of breakaway from this promise, depending on the individual companies’ needs, so I don’t think it’s likely to stick.”



Stevens’ view that pharma price capping is more a product of political expediency than a social contract would seem to be corroborated by statements reportedly made by AbbVie during a meeting with pharma analysts from Leerink Partners in September. According to Leerink Partners, during the meeting AbbVie stated that “the intensity of the drug pricing debates and political risks is waning, and...the company now sees little risk of significant changes in drug price regulation in the US, at least for the foreseeable future.” The firm reportedly noted that it may “revert to more than one price increase per year and to double-digit increases in 2018 and beyond”.



More than just list prices


Of course, list prices are only part of the story, as industry trade associations such as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) are keen to emphasise. The US system of reimbursement is incredibly complex and somewhat opaque, and the discounts and rebates offered to health systems and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) aren’t necessarily passed on to the patient.



“Perhaps one of the reasons they do not want to talk about rebates is because they do not always directly share those rebates with patients at the point of sale,” wrote PhRMA vice president of public affairs Robert Zirkelbach in a blog post last year. “Unlike care received at a hospital or physician’s office, insurance companies require patients with high deductibles and co-insurance to pay the full list price for their medicine, even if their insurer receives a significant discount.”


The US system of reimbursement is incredibly complex and somewhat opaque



While CSRxP’s Holley acknowledges the complexity of reimbursement and the need for more transparency, he contends – unsurprisingly, given that CSRxP’s membership includes health insurers and PBMs – that this industry argument is an intentional “muddying of the waters”.



“At the end of the day, no matter the rebates and discounts, if the drug costs $135,000 a year, rebates, discounts and negotiations can only go so far,” he says. In March, health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare announced that it would pass on rebates to a portion of its customers on certain employer-sponsored health plans, kicking off another self-regulation debate over whether the healthcare industry can create more transparency and fairness without the need for government oversight.


ISN'T UNITED HEALTH CARE TOP GUN US HEALTH FRAUD CORPORATION THESE FEW DECADES OF CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA?  INDEED, LET'S TRUST THEM TO SELF-REGULATE.


Blocking generic competition



Another key driver of drug prices is pharma companies’ efforts to extend patent protection for their blockbuster products far beyond their original periods of market exclusivity. Despite Saunders’ ‘social contract’, Allergan recently found itself under the spotlight after a particularly unusual patent protection scheme, in which the company transferred the patent rights for dry-eye drug Restasis to the sovereign St. Regis Mohawk native American tribe, which then attempted to block generic competition. The US Patent Trial and Appeal Board denied the motion.



Other methods of patent protection and ‘pay-to-delay’ deals are more mundane, but potentially just as damaging to generic and biosimilar competition, which is a sure-fire method of driving down prices across the board.


“[Humira’s] patent actually expired in 2014, but [AbbVie] was able to tie the product up in so many patents – I think it’s got over 100 patents protecting different aspects of the product; tiny things, but if you’re a smaller biosimilar company, you can’t fight stuff like this,” says Stevens. “We’ve seen the company make a deal for biosimilars not to launch until 2023. That’s almost ten years after the original patent expired.”

The CREATES Act […] would take a small step towards deterring companies from blocking generic competition



This is an area where there is a real prospect of regulatory reform. The CREATES Act, currently being considered for inclusion in the government’s omnibus spending package, would take a small step towards deterring companies from blocking generic competition, and the US Food and Drug Administration under Scott Gottlieb is working to accelerate the development of generics. “We expect to take additional steps this year to promote competition; to help reduce drug prices and improve access to medicine for Americans,” Gottlieb wrote in January.

OH, REALLY SCOTT?  HOW WILL THAT BE DONE AS US FOOD AND DRUG IS PARTNERED WITH GLOBAL HEALTH CORPORATIONS AND PHARMA WRITING TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT HAVING A GOAL OF KILLING THE GENERICS INDUSTRY?



Nevertheless, at the moment any major overhaul of drug pricing in the US seems like a distant prospect, and as pharma companies are likely to do the minimum necessary to avert that threat, there is little incentive for the industry to implement bolder self-regulation on pricing.


With a powerful pharma lobby to set the terms of the conversation in Washington and seemingly little political will to pursue radical reforms, the industry will see little need to change its course drastically. A credible threat of top-down change on pricing might be a shot in the arm for American healthcare, if only to drive firmer action to control costs under the existing system.






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

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