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September 30th, 2014

9/30/2014

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__“The stockholders benefit from those students’ enrollments, but the students get stuck with a lousy education that will follow them the rest of their lives,”

says Jeff Bryant, the director of the Education Opportunity Network.

Below you see why Maryland's governor's race was allowed to become completely rigged. Neo-liberals and neo-cons had to win to move to the general election to insure this education privatization continued in Maryland. That is why we saw 'THE 3 DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES FOR GOVERNOR'----all Clinton neo-liberals committed to moving this K-12 privatization forward. Since this is a Republican policy Larry Hogan will as well. This is an issue for Republican voters as well as they are the loudest in hating this control of parents rights to educate children as they want. Sadly, Republican voters do not know this is all Republican think tank policy to hand schools to Wall Street. Then again, neither do Democratic voters. Know who knows the goal of these education reforms? National labor and justice leaders and they support neo-liberals every election.

In Baltimore we have the Catholic and Episcopalian Churches with the Black Churches all supporting these privatization plans knowing how it will hurt the American people.

This is why there is silence in Maryland as to these reforms. Why do labor and justice go along with the dismantling of public education? The Black church is receiving lots of education money and the opportunity to be business owners. They simply want a way to earn money. The Catholic and Episcopal Churches want religious schools supported with public money---remember the Medieval dynamic of Church being the public sector. Labor unions are being held hostage by neo-liberals threatening union rights.

That's why this will take Maryland citizens to become engaged to do the advocacy these organizations should be. Unlike what the article below says----WE CAN REVERSE THIS --- get rid of the neo-liberals and we get rid of these bad education policies.

HOLD YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS ACCOUNTABLE AND RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES IN ALL PRIMARY ELECTIONS.

ALL OF MARYLAND POLS ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.


Venture Capitalists Are Poised to "Disrupt" Everything About the Education Market

Monday, 29 September 2014 10:20 By Lee Fang, The Nation | Report

In his book, Finding the Next Starbucks: How to Identify and Invest in the Hot Stocks of Tomorrow, Michael Moe, describes how carefully crafted business strategies have transformed markets to create huge profits in unlikely sectors. The title relates to how Starbucks became a global corporation of almost $15 billion in revenue by capturing and streamlining the café experience. Moe, a former director at Merrill Lynch, wrote that at one point in the United States, even healthcare was an undesirable and difficult industry for investment, and that bankers once worried if profit-making in such a realm was worth their effort. In 1970, healthcare spending comprised 8 percent of GDP, yet market capitalization in healthcare stood at less than 3 percent. That shifted quickly not only as the boomer generation aged, but as a wave of privatization hit hospitals, insurers, and other segments of the healthcare system. More than thirty years later, Moe wrote, healthcare companies are among the largest in the world, and represent more than 16 percent of US capital markets. “We see the education industry today as the healthcare industry of 30 years ago,” Moe predicted.

That book came out eight years ago, before the current wave of education investing, when the prospect for growth seemed dim. Unlike in healthcare, energy and other areas of the economy that have moved from public to private hands, K-through-12 education has stubbornly remained largely out of the control of investors.

Next year, the market size of K-12 education is projected to be $788.7 billion. And currently, much of that money is spent in the public sector. “It’s really the last honeypot for Wall Street,” says Donald Cohen, the executive director of In the Public Interest, a think tank that tracks the privatization of roads, prisons, schools and other parts of the economy.

That might be changing soon as barriers to investment are rapidly fading. As Eric Hippeau, a partner with Lerer Ventures, the venture capital firm behind viral entertainment company BuzzFeed and several education start-ups, has argued, despite the opposition of “unions, public school bureaucracies, and parents,” the “education market is ripe for disruption.”

Hippeau’s vision is the growing sentiment among investors. Education technology firms secured a record $1.25 billion in investments across 378 deals in 2013, while analysts predict that number will continue to surge this year. Since 2010, Moe has led what has been billed as the premiere education investment conference, which takes place annually in Scottsdale, Arizona. The first year attracted around 370 people and 55 presenting companies. This year, that number soared to over 2,000 with over 290 presenting companies and speeches by luminaries including former Governor Jeb Bush, Magic Johnson and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. One of the largest start-ups, a Herndon, Virginia–based company called K12 Inc., a for-profit largely online charter chain, posted nearly $1 billion in annual revenue for its last fiscal year in August.

Many are attempting to duplicate that success. “There’s a dramatic shift in how investors are thinking about this industry,” Fahad Hassan, an education entrepreneur with his own venture-backed start-up, told a meeting of entrepreneurs earlier this year.

The explosion of investor interest in education raises a number of questions, among them: What kind of influence will the for-profit education sector attempt to exert over education policy? And if school reform is crafted to maximize the potential for investor profit, will students benefit, as boosters claim—or will they suffer?

There’s also the question of the effect of privatization on costs. And there, the healthcare example gives reason for concern. The privatization of health services has corresponded closely with skyrocketing costs, leaving millions of Americans without access to care or deeply in debt for seeking treatment for their illnesses. While new laws, including the Affordable Care Act, have extended insurance coverage to some 10 million Americans, many remain without coverage. The United States still spends $8,745 per capita on healthcare, far above the average for all other industrialized countries.

The tantalizing prospect of tapping into the K-12 market has drummed up new level of zeal from education reformers.

A good barometer of this passion is a document distributed by Moe, who now leads a firm called GSV Capital, which invests heavily in education start-ups including Knewton Inc. and Avenues, a New York–based private school with plans to expand into a global chain. Like any sweeping manifesto, his education reform blueprint sets the stage by listing massive social upheavals—the Arab Spring, the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Spanish Civil War—and asks, for the “Second American Revolution,” one fought to decide the fate of education policy, “Which side of history will we be on?”

The revolution GSV goes on to describe is a battle to control the fate of America’s K-12 education system. Noting that this money is still controlled by public entities, or what’s referred in the document as “the old model,” the GSV paper calls for reformers to join the “education battlefield.” (A colorful diagram depicts “unions” and “status quo” forces equipped with muskets across businesses and other “change agents” equipped with a fighter jet and a howitzer.) The GSV manifesto declares, “we believe the opportunity to build numerous multi-billion dollar education enterprises is finally real.”

This opportunity exists in part because of major policy changes under the Obama administration. States moving to adopt the federal government’s Common Core standards, which include new standardized testing requirements, have incentivized the private sector to provide solutions to schools. According to Paul Irby, a market analyst with Onvia, states striving to implement the new standards could spend upwards of $12 billion, with much of the money going to updating IT, professional development for teachers, and testing technology.

Moreover, the Obama administration’s signature “Race to the Top” program, which provides states with large cash grants in exchange for changing how students and teachers are evaluated, is being viewed as a potential cash cow for education start-ups. In a blog post, Alex Hernandez, a partner with the Charter School Growth Fund, writes that school districts are “raising more money than you can shake a stick at” and the money granted to local school systems from Race to the Top may be used on the latest tech innovations. The most recent round of Race to the Top Funding, he adds, means districts “should be unwrapping new toys for a while.”

The Department of Education under Obama has seen a flow of revolving door hires from the education investment community. In May of this year, the Senate confirmed Ted Mitchell, the chief executive of the NewSchools Venture Fund, as the Under Secretary for the US Department of Education. Prior to his government position, Mitchell, a personal investor in an array of education start-ups, forged a partnership last year with the creators of Facebook app FarmVille to create new education game products. James Shelton, the Deputy Secretary, is a longtime education investor and the former co-founder of LearnNow, a charter chain that was sold to Edison Learning, a for-profit charter management company.

In an interview with EdSurge, a trade outlet, Shelton explained that the Common Core standards will allow education companies to produce products that “can scale across many markets,” overcoming the “fragmented procurement market” that has plagued investors seeking to enter the K-12 sector. Moreover, Shelton and his team manage an education innovation budget, awarding grants to charter schools and research centers to advance the next breakthrough in education technology. Increased research and development in education innovation, Shelton wrote in testimony to Congress, will spark the next “equivalent of Google or Microsoft to lead the global learning technology market.” He added, “I want it to be a US company.”

The other transformative changes come from the state and local level as a new class of politicians, including scores of Democratic mayors and Republican legislators and state officials, have ushered in new laws in recent years to divert taxpayer funding to charter schools, which are often run as for-profit companies and are more willing to embrace tech-centric classroom solutions than their public sector counterparts. In many states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Ohio, parents may opt to apply the amount the state would normally spend on their child’s education (between roughly $5,000 to $10,000) to send their children to a charter.

The opening up of the K-12 money for privately run schools, through charter schools or through vouchers applied to private schools, with restrictions on launching charter schools increasingly relaxed in many states, has created a boom in charter businesses hoping to persuade parents to trust their children, along with their money, with them. At present, more than 4 percent of students are enrolled at the more than 6,000 charter schools in operation. Few figures exist on how many of these students are taught by for-profit operators (in most states, charter schools must be registered as nonprofits, though they may outsource their operations to proprietary companies.)

The breakneck speed at which these schools have taken off, often with little oversight, has led to scandals. Since 2013, the FBI has investigated more than five charter schools in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and beyond on suspicion that management has misplaced or stolen funds. In Florida, a state with famously lenient rules for operating charters and among the highest concentration for-profit K through 12 schools, the Miami Herald has reported on a continuing laundry list of poorly run charters: students going weeks without textbooks, class attendance sheets faked, and children charged illegal fees for standard courses. In a growing phenomenon, one Florida for-profit company, Academica, has earned over $19 million a year by charging leasing fees to public school land already owned by its charter schools.

Does free market competition ensure accountability in education by turning bad operators into economic losers? That’s what privatizers claim, but the record so far suggests otherwise.

K12 Inc., the for-profit charter behemoth that enrolls 123,259 students, went public in 2007 with the help of Moe’s previous investment firm, and has since been a darling of Wall Street. In January of this year, students from Newark Prep Charter School, which is K12 Inc.-operated, joined executives from the company to ring in the bell of the New York Stock Stock Exchange. In Moe’s revolutionary manifesto, K12 Inc. is listed as among the businesses he considers the “special forces” that will remake the education landscape.

The rising revenues of K12 Inc. have been matched by poor performance. In the 2010-2011 school year, only 27.7 percent of K12 Inc.-operated schools met the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standard, far below the 52 percent average of brick and mortar public schools. An investigation in Colorado, where K12 Inc. has been ejected from several school districts, found that nearly half of online students left within a year, and when those students returned to brick and mortar schools, they were further behind academically than when they started. Similar investigations in Florida and Ohio found K12 Inc. teachers instructing classes without certification and instructing online classes of over 250 students.

In several states, K12 Inc.-operated virtual charter schools have faced a backlash because of poor performance and high drop-out rates. In July, Tennessee’s education commissioner announced the closure of the Tennessee Virtual Academy, K12 Inc.’s affiliate school, at the end of the 2014-2015 school year because of the charter’s failure to score above the state’s lowest level of academic achievement. Last month, Pennsylvania’s Agora Cyber Charter School, the largest school managed by K12 Inc., voted to consider ending its relationship with the company after revelations that the school allegedly manipulated attendance sheets and performance data in an attempt to conceal incredibly high rates of student turnover.

Still, despite wave after wave of negative press, K12 Inc. figures as a solid investment opportunity to many. Baird Equity Research, in a giddy note to investors this year about the potential growth of K12 Inc., noted, “capturing just two million (3.5%) of the addressable market yields a market opportunity of approximately $12 billion … Over the next three years, we believe that the company is capable of 7%+ organic revenue growth with modest margin expansion.” How will it achieve this growth? According to Baird, K12 Inc.’s “competency in lobbying in new states” is “another key point of differentiation.” The analyst note describes “K12’s success in working closely with state policymakers and school districts to enable the expansion of virtual schools into new states or districts” as a key asset. “The company has years of experience in successfully lobbying to get legislation passed to allow virtual schools to operate,” Baird concludes.

Indeed, K12 Inc.’s spectactular growth over the years stems largely from the extraordinary amount the company spends on lobbying, as well as on marketing and advertising, with promises in some areas that enrollment comes with a free computer. USA Today found that the company spent $21.5 million on advertising in the first eight months of 2012. The company sponsors billboards, radio advertisements, and spots on children’s cable television.

K12 Inc.’s lobbyists helped author model legislation to develop sweeping voucher laws through the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that provides state lawmakers with template legislation. Though state by state lobbying figures are difficult to come by, given the patchwork of varying laws, K12 Inc. has hired dozens of local officials to ensure that these voucher laws are quickly passed with few amendments. “We have incurred significant lobbying costs in several states,” K12 Inc. noted in a filing with the SEC.

“The stockholders benefit from those students’ enrollments, but the students get stuck with a lousy education that will follow them the rest of their lives,” says Jeff Bryant, the director of the Education Opportunity Network.

Nevertheless, Moe and his cohort have pledged to grow the industry by leaps and bounds in coming years. At the last two conference he organized, there was talk of organizing a bipartisan campaign to persuade 2016 presidential candidates to sign onto a statement of principles endorsing charters and other education innovations. The pledge also called for the federal government to create new tax incentives for spending on education companies akin to a health savings account.

At the last conference in April, Moe closed on an optimistic note. “How do you balance this whole idea between making a profit and helping kids?” he asked. “The way that we think we’re going to create the greatest returns for our investors is by investing in companies that have the greatest educational impact.”


___________________________

This article shows the same dynamics in Colorado-----a very neo-liberal state-----as we see in Maryland. School Boards are increasingly being made appointments and election rigging is giving us a continuous chain of neo-liberals who then appoint business/privatization school boards. O'Malley has done that in Baltimore with his tag-team corporate pol Rawlings-Blake giving us the worst of school boards all so these privatization schemes can continue.

Below you see NATION-WIDE TEACHER/STUDENT PROTESTS and the fact that the unions comes not to support these striking teachers----but to say they have nothing to do with the protest.

DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE WAS A NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST OF EDUCATION REFORM HERE IN MARYLAND?


MUMS THE WORD WITH CAPTURED LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS!


Please become the leaders we need in our public justice organizations! Hmmmmmmmm....positive aspects of history like Bush/Cheney being a great success and Wall Street 'greed' and not massive corporate fraud. Eliminate the labor, womens, civil rights movements because that is negative. This is what Common Core is about. It takes us back to history being written by and for the rich. We had revolutions in Europe and America to GIVE THE PEOPLE THE VOICE IN PUBLIC POLICY AND HISTORY and neo-liberals and neo-cons work hard to take this away!

'instructional material should promote "positive aspects" of U.S. history and avoid encouraging "civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law."

Jeffco schools superintendent threatens to discipline absent teachers

By Jesse Paul
The Denver PostPosted: 09/29/2014 05:44:11 AM MDT

GOLDEN — Jefferson County's school superintendent threatened to bring disciplinary action against dozens of teachers who called in sick or used a personal day as part of an ongoing protest that closed two high schools Monday.

"Some of our highest-need students didn't get lunch today because they weren't in school," Superintendent Dan McMinimee said.

Golden and Jefferson high schools closed Monday because of the high number of teacher absences that occurred even after principals had urged the teachers not to miss school, McMinimee said.

Lynn Setzer, a spokeswoman for Jefferson County Public Schools, said most teachers called in sick after 8 p.m. Sunday. Fifty-two of the 65 teachers at Golden called in absent, while 27 of 37 teachers were absent at Jefferson.

Teachers who missed school will have to show proof of illness, McMinimee said, adding that personal days need 24 hours' notice.

"We are going to have our building principals work with each teacher involved in this," he said.

"We will probably dock them a day's pay," McMinimee said of teachers who didn't follow the guidelines of the collective bargaining agreement. "I think it's time for this to end. Let's put an end to this."

Teachers who were absent Sept. 19, causing the district to close Standley Lake and Conifer high schools, will not be disciplined. Officials said they thought those marked a one-time event, so they decided not to consider discipline.

John Ford, president of the Jefferson County Education Association, reiterated that the union had nothing to do with organizing teacher absences and said union members would honor the contract and provide any information it must to the district.

"The board majority has the ability to put this to an end," Ford said. "They just have to start listening to the community and the students and the parents. People are frustrated."


Tammie Peters, an English teacher in Golden, was asked to speak to the media on behalf of the school's educators.

"I stand with my fellow teachers who are 'sick' of the board majority's actions,"
Peters said in a statement. "While we need some reforms in Jefferson County, the board majority is not providing the reforms we need or want. The board majority continues to show disrespect to the voters, the taxpayers, the teachers, the parents and the students of Jefferson County."

Peters said Jeffco teachers feel the board is treating them unfairly and using a flawed evaluation system.

"I'm very disappointed that some of our instructors have chosen not to turn up for work today," school board president Ken Witt said Monday. "It is not appropriate for adult matters to impact the education of our students."

Witt said the district worked "diligently" during the weekend to prepare for and prevent mass teacher absences, adding that he was upset that teachers from Jefferson High School, where students are lagging in some subjects, caused their school to close.

"It wasn't until this morning that there were enough sick call-ins to force us to close the schools," Witt said.

Despite the unrest, as Oct. 1 — the official student count day — approaches, state officials said Monday that absences should not affect the district's funding of $7,021 per student. Extensions and rules in the count allow for students present five days before and five days after Oct. 1 to be included in the funding determination.

The district also can show evidence of attendance outside the 10-day window.

"All is not lost if they are not there on Oct. 1," said Janelle Asmus, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Education.

Despite canceled classes, students at both closed high schools showed up to support their teachers and protest the school board.


Rachel Hilbrecht, a senior at Golden High School, said she's been out protesting at 6:30 a.m. and during her lunch breaks every school day since last Monday.

"Instead of seeing it as a day off school, we decided it would be better to come out here and voice our opinion to the public," Hilbrecht said.


Angelica Dole, a sophomore at Jefferson High School, said the students were 100 percent behind their teachers.


"This is our own time. This was all students. No teachers are here," Dole said. "Look around."

Monday's closure comes after a series of student walk-outs and protests last week at most of the county's high schools.

While teachers have been voicing discontentment for months, a proposed committee that was going to review the AP U.S. history curriculum provided the catalyst for the protests. As initially proposed by board member Julie Williams, instructional material should promote "positive aspects" of U.S. history and avoid encouraging "civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law."

The board tabled the idea for the panel, and significant cuts and changes have been proposed. The committee proposal was not supposed to be on the agenda of this Thursday's school board meeting, but on Monday a discussion of the proposal was added in response to the student protests.


_______________________

It takes corporate non-profits to generate the data showing the success of corporate education privatization-----this is what ACY -----a national corporate non-profit does across the country and is tied to this education reform.


Who We Are

Who We Are Why does Advocates for Children and Youth Exist?


What Do We Do? We improve the lives and experiences of Maryland’s children through policy change and program improvement.

What Do We Provide? We provide advocacy and impact data as well as personalized stories to help tell the story of Maryland’s children in a simple way. This information is often used by state agencies, legislators and our fellow advocates.

Advocacy Data: We research and recommend best practices to inform or further our work as we champion a course of action or support a point of view.

Impact Data: We collect and publish statistics on more than 60 indicators of child well-being as part of our work as a KidsCount® affiliate.

Recommendations: We offer sound ideas to agencies, policy makers and our community based on extensive research, in-depth analysis and proven programs in order to better the lives of Maryland’s children.

Stories: We compile and share personalized stories so that we can continually connect with those that we serve.

Why Are We Every Child’s Ally?
• We protect the rights of children in all aspects of health, justice, education and welfare—improving the social sphere for each of Maryland’s children
• We champion the need for a better world for each child and watching out for them when no one else does—it is all about building positive childhood experiences for generations to come


HERE IS THE DATA PROVIDED THAT SHOWS BALTIMORE'S EDUCATION POLICIES ARE WORKING! SURPRISE!

There has been so much media attention to growing problems in achievement, discipline, access and fairness, and where the money is going......fraud and corruption in Baltimore. We have outside research data telling us Baltimore is failing in all avenues of education policy and yet----

HERE IS ACY-----THE JOHNS HOPKINS CORPORATE NON-PROFIT TASKED WITH SUPPLYING DATA THAT ALL IS THE EDUCATION POLICY IT PUSHES IN BALTIMORE IS PEACHY!

The Director is from Hopkins, Mary Pat Clarke is a Hopkins pol and this is why there is silence in Baltimore when people are shouting all over the nation.

I will provide the research and data that tells this different story tomorrow. This is the problem for Maryland----we have no reliable data sources because we have no public sector. This is why as well we have no education organizations shouting that this is very bad policy and why teachers and administrators in Baltimore are silenced-----the schools are filled with Hopkins private education non-profits. We have all data provided by Johns Hopkins who is writing all the policy! Just a quick example is the systematic push by schools to keep low performing students out of school on the day of testing to boost school achievement scores. Simply changing what constitutes an institution that qualifies to graduate high school students gives you higher graduation rates.

An advocate for children would not embrace these practices-----they would out them.

More children are living in high-poverty neighborhoods because the the massive closing of schools in Baltimore's underserved communities. ACY supports these gentrification policies. Mary Pat Clarke is the chair of Baltimore City Hall education committee and she is head of ACY----When you have the same city counsel people voting the privatization policy in place heading corporate non-profits attached to schools----you get positive data. You will not hear this organization shouting as teachers, parents, and students are by the millions across the nation. WHY IS THAT?

Think of the article above with Denver teachers protesting policy that only 'positive information is taught in schools'.


KIDS COUNT Data Book Reveals Improvements in Health, Education Child Well-Being Indicators

State Policy Changes Have Resulted in Positive Changes for Children, but More are Living in High-Poverty Neighborhoods

BALTIMORE — Demographic, social and economic changes combined with major policy developments have affected the lives of Maryland’s lower-income children in both positive and negative ways since 1990, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 25th edition of its annual KIDS COUNT Data Book.

The new Data Book uses 16 child well-being indicators across four areas – Economic Well-Being, Education, Health and Family and Community. In Maryland, health and education indicators show steady improvement. Approximately 1.3 million children or 96 percent were insured in 2012—a one percent improvement over 2008. More children are also attending Pre-K with 73,000 children or 50 percent getting additional support to help them succeed.

“These indicators are encouraging and confirm that our work is appropriately focused,” said Al Passarella, research director for Advocates for Children and Youth. “We have made a concerted effort to reach vulnerable youth populations to advise them, direct service providers and their caregivers about healthcare coverage and we have worked with fellow advocates to ensure that Pre-K is a priority.”

However, Passarella said there is more work to be done as there are some worrisome trends.

There was an increase in the number of households who have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. In 2012, 500,000 children lived in such households which represented a 6 percent increase over 2005. The number of children living in poverty was183,000 which represents a 27 percent increase since 2005. The rate of children growing up in financial stressed households has also increased, with 35 percent or 502,000 children living in a neighborhood where households that spend 30 percent or more on their income housing expenses.

“These statistics show that we can never rest easy when it comes to improving outcomes for Maryland’s children,” said Passarella. “Based on these indicators, Maryland ranks 12th in the nation; however, when you examine the data in detail our children still need some of the basics that we sometimes take for granted.”

The new Data Book examines the more recent national trends between 2005 and 2012 which hold true for Maryland as well:

• Children continue to progress in the areas of education and health. All four education indicators covering milestones such as preschool attendance and high school graduation showed steady improvements. Child health also improved across all four indicators, and more children have access to health insurance coverage than before the recession. There were also drops in child and teen mortality and teen substance abuse. The percent of low-birth weight babies declined slightly.

• Economic progress still lags, even after the end of the recession. Three of the four economic well-being indicators were worse than the mid-decade years, which is not surprising given the severity of the economic crisis over the past six years. However, the majority of the indicators in this area improved slightly at the national level since the 2013 Data Book, indicating modest but hopeful signs of recovery.

• Mixed picture on Family and Community indicators. The teen birth rate is at a historic low. There was a small drop in the percent of children living in families where the household head lacks a high school diploma. However, there was an increase in the percent of children living in single-parent families and more children living in high-poverty areas.

The KIDS COUNT Data Book features the latest data on child well-being for every state, the District of Columbia and the nation. This information is available in the KIDS COUNT Data Center, which also contains the most recent national, state and local data on hundreds of measures of child well-being. Data Center users can create rankings, maps and graphs for use in publications and on websites, and view real-time information on mobile devices.


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I am not against private or religious schools-----I am not against private charters. I am against all of the above getting ever larger portions of public education money with the goal of privatizing public education I also strongly support separation of church and state. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KEEP SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE IN PLACE.

As global corporations provide greater wealth inequity we are seeing our public sector disappear and the church step in. For those conservatives who support church as public sector READ THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE---IT DOESN'T END WELL FOR THE MASSES!


Why is Maryland spending millions in public funds for private school books, computers?

By Valerie Strauss April 3, 2013 Washington Post

There’s an interesting item in the 2014 supplemental budget that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) has submitted: a request for $500,000 in “additional funds for non-public school textbooks.”
What is this all about?
It turns out that there is something called the Maryland NonPublic Student Textbook Program, which, since 2001, has provided public funds for textbooks, computers and other resources that are loaned to qualified private schools. The $500,000 request is on top of more than $5 million already allocated to the program. During the O’Malley’s administration, the funding has risen at least $1 million already.
The Maryland Catholic Conference is a big supporter of the program, and even offered talking points to supporters for Lobby Night 2013, which complains, er, points out that other states, such as New York, spend a lot more money on nonpublic school services such as this. Lobby Night was aimed at members of the Maryland Senate Budget & Taxation House Appropriations and House Appropriations committees.
In fact, Mary Ellen Russell, executive director of the Maryland Catholic Conference, was quoted by MarylandReporter.com as saying that Maryland “provides significantly less to support private education” than some other states; she cited the following figures: Pennsylvania, about $300 million annually; New York, $180 million, New Jersey, about $150 million.
Here’s the Maryland program’s official mission, taken from a Maryland State Department of Education document, which you can find here:
The purpose of the program is to provide funding for the purchase of textbooks, computer hardware and computer software for loan to students in eligible nonpublic schools, with a maximum distribution of $60 per eligible nonpublic school student for participating schools except at schools where at least 20 percent of the students are eligible for the free and reduced price meals program, the distribution will be $90 per student.

Raquel Guillory, director of communications for O’Malley, said the program started under a different governor more than a decade ago, and that the funding for it does not come from tax revenues but instead from the Maryland Cigarette Restitution Fund, which was created from the 1998 Master Tobacco Settlement Agreement with the tobacco industry.
But according to the Web site of the Cigarette Restitution Fund:
The goal of the CRF Program is to implement strategies to reduce the burden of tobacco related disease in Maryland, with a specific emphasis on tobacco use prevention and cessation and cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment. As a result of the CRF Program, Maryland has created focused tobacco-use prevention and cessation programs, cancer prevention, education, and screening programs, cancer research programs, and a strong statewide network of cancer and tobacco local community health coalitions.

Where exactly textbooks and computers for private non-religious and religious schools fits in is unclear.
When asked if O’Malley was asking for more money for the program at the request of the Catholic Church, Guillory said only that O’Malley was not the first governor to provide money for the program. The state Department of Education provided a list of more than 300 schools who received help through the program for fiscal year 2013, the vast majority religious, with most of those Catholic.
Under Maryland law, the allocated money does not go directly to private schools. Rather, eligible nonpublic schools must submit requisition requests to the state Education Department and the agency orders and pays for the books and computers.
The textbooks must be non-religious. Eligible schools must “hold a certificate of approval or be registered with the State Board of Education, through MSDE’s Division of Certification and Accreditation” and “not charge more tuition than the statewide average per pupil expenditure by local school systems, according to this state document about the program. Eligible schools must also comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The New Jersey Nonpublic School Textbook Law works differently from the Maryland law:
The New Jersey Nonpublic School Textbook Law requires the board of education in each public school district in New Jersey with state funds to purchase and loan textbooks, upon individual request to all students attending a nonpublic school located in the public school district. The students are
enrolled full-time in grades kindergarten through twelve in a nonpublic school in New Jersey which complies with compulsory school attendance requirements
and with the requirements of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

California once had such a program but it was stopped and efforts to revive it were rejected — back in 1982. Californians decided to spend public money on public schools.


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Baltimore's reformers mirror what happened in Philadelphia.  Philly's moved forward faster because its Republican governor did not have to pretend to be helping Philly's schools.

Remember, the No Child Left Behind unfunded mandate was simply installed to allow Obama to push Race to the Top designed to close public schools and replace them with charters.  Bush never funded NCLB because there was never any intent to improve public schools, only to use this law to privatize public schools.  This is the neo-liberal/neo-con tag team.


How to Destroy a Public-School System In Philadelphia, education reformers got everything they wanted. Look where the city’s schools are now.


Daniel Denvir September 24, 2014   |    This article appeared in the October 13, 2014 edition of The Nation.

This article was reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, with support from the Puffin Foundation.

The older woman wore gloves as she stooped to pick up trash outside Steel Elementary School, tucked into a quiet block of black working-class homes in Philadelphia’s Nicetown section. Apparently, the volunteer had made an impromptu decision to stop by and tidy the place up on her way to wherever she was going.

“This is a community school,” boasts Steel School Advisory Council president Kendra Brooks, a parent of two Steel students, standing next to banners proclaiming We Are Family and We Love Our School. “We have generations and generations of families who have been through Steel School. We have teachers who have been here eighteen, twenty-eight years. So we’ve built a community.”

The school’s tenor—what educators call “climate”—seems positive. Inside, first-grade students are engaged in a reading exercise, while third graders prepare to paint cutouts of butterflies after learning about their life cycle. But the end-of-year calm belies a bruising conflict.

In April, parents and teachers launched a high-profile fight to block a takeover of Steel by a charter-school network after the district, citing the school’s low test scores, declared it in need of an overhaul.
Brooks believes that her school—which, like others, has reeled under the budget cuts implemented by Pennsylvania’s Republican governor, Tom Corbett—had been set up to fail. Last spring, apart from the principal and a secretary, she says, Steel had “a teacher for each class” and almost “nothing extra.”

The designation of neighborhood schools as “failing” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, passed in the early years of the George W. Bush administration, has enabled the rapid growth in Philadelphia of networks like Mastery Charter Schools,
which had been tapped to take over Steel. Founded in 2001 with 100 ninth graders, Mastery now educates its own district-within-a-district of nearly 10,000 students in fifteen schools and boasts high test scores and a culture of determined optimism. Ten of these schools are “turnarounds”—in recent years dubbed “Renaissance schools”—that were taken over from the district. Charter-school advocates cite Mastery as a golden model of “no excuses” education within a local charter sector that often suffers from mixed test scores and financial corruption. “Give me the opportunity to break myths and assumptions that folks will have about poor communities that turn out to be completely false,” says Mastery CEO Scott Gordon. He likes to say that the district is a “house on fire” and that poor children are trapped inside. Many parents and students love Mastery, crediting its turnarounds with calming chaotic hallways, improving learning and directing children’s attention toward college.

But Mastery has its critics, who accuse the network of practicing rote teach-to-the-test instruction and burning through young teachers. Even Michael Masch, the school district’s former chief financial officer and a progressive fan of Mastery’s work, makes a point of noting that the charter network engages in prodigious outside fundraising. Mastery is “not doing more with less,” Masch says. “They’re doing more with more.”

In fact, the basic structure of school financing in Philadelphia is rigged to benefit these privately managed companies. Public-school money follows students when they move to charter schools, but the public schools’ costs do not fall by the same amount. For example, if 100 students leave a district-run school at a cost of $8,596 per head (the district’s per-pupil expenditure minus certain administrative costs), that school’s cost for paying teachers, staff and building expenses doesn’t actually decline by that amount. It has been estimated that partly because of these costs, each student who enrolls in a charter school costs the district as much as $7,000.

There are outright subsidies too, including a loophole that provides charters with an extra “double-dip” pension payment. Charters also appear to game the state’s special-education payment system to secure a larger share of district funds. In 2013, according to the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, city charters obtained nearly $100 million more than they spent on special education.

At Steel, Parents United for Public Education, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and Concerned Neighbors of Nicetown organized to block the Mastery takeover, as allegations circulated that the district would provide the charter with an additional $2 million in annual funding. Gordon disputes this figure and says that Mastery invests just $1.5 million of its own privately raised dollars in turnaround schools—and then only for the first year.

Steel parents voted 121–55 to oppose the Mastery takeover, while the School Advisory Council, in a decision rife with allegations of misconduct on both sides, narrowly backed it by a vote of 9 to 8. Mastery withdrew. Weeks later, the parents and advisory council at another school slated for takeover—in this case, by the Puerto Rican–led ASPIRA network--voted overwhelmingly in opposition.

These votes were among the few successful coordinated efforts by parents and teachers to block charter expansion in Philadelphia. They constituted a pivotal moment in a struggle involving Corbett, well-funded education reformers bent on privatizing public schools, a battered teachers union, and students and parents attempting to navigate a school system in which fiscal crisis has become the only constant.

Gordon, Brooks notes, “said his job was ‘to help poor people.’ Well, no one asked for your help…. Every couple years, they come up with a new philosophy about what’s best—instead of funding the schools.”

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September 29th, 2014

9/29/2014

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As public school budget are cut by state and local governments, corporate tax breaks and property tax breaks, and policies like tiered per-pupil funding schools are being forced to reach out to corporations for ways to earn money....that is the point.  In Maryland, the Maryland Assembly has started the conversation of ending all funding of public education again to push public schools into dependence on corporate partnerships.  This is the goal of education privatization by neo-liberals and Republicans.  Let's take a look if this even has any cost-effective analysis or is it just another way to move money to global corporations?



Schools' Activities to Raise Money With Businesses Don't Pay, Researchers Say



By Michele Molnar on September 18, 2014 10:29 AM

School districts that boost their coffers by entering into money-making agreements with companies rarely gain much in return, a pair of researchers found.

"Every dollar is important, but every dollar might not be worthwhile," said Brian Brent, a professor and associate dean at the University of Rochester in New York, in a phone interview about the findings of the study he summarized this month in School Business Affairs, a magazine published by the Association of School Business Officials International. 

While Brent acknowledges that money is raised by districts engaging in a variety of commercial activities with beverage companies, local businesses, and national companies, he said its impact is marginal, and the cost of administering and maintaining such contracts is seldom factored into the equation.

School business officials in 197 Pennsylvania districts and 307 New York districts responded to the survey. Brent and his co-author Stephen Lunden, the assistant superintendent for administrative services at the Maryvale Union Free School District in New York, found that 94 percent of Pennsylvania schools and 75 percent of New York schools engaged in some sort of commercial activity.

Their study focused on two primary forms of making money: granting exclusive agreements to sell or promote products or services, including agreements to offer vending machines and so-called "pouring rights" to soft drink and beverage companies, and appropriated space agreements, in which districts may sell space on school property from scoreboards to buses and computer screens.



Brent and Lunden compared the money raised with how much it impacts local tax revenues, and found the impact to be negligible, as the tables above and below show. However, that is often the reason cited by districts for engaging in these activities—to offset losses in local tax revenues. 

"School business officials want to help," he said, looking for alternate sources to raise revenues and to provide tax relief. But he said the numbers don't add up. This study is a "cautionary tale" that the efforts might not be worth the potential down side, which includes exposing children as a "captive audience" to the commercial messages, and promoting unhealthy products, among others, Brent said.

The researchers also asked districts to explain how they applied the funds they raised. Usually, the money was intended to provide funding for a specific sport or extracurricular activity. 




Most district officials said they would continue to use exclusive agreements—59 percent in Pennsylvania and 51 percent in New York. But opinions differed more markedly on the use of appropriated space: 40 percent of New Yorkers said they intended to continue to pursue this method of getting income, while 74 percent said they would not.

The study was originally published in Leadership and Policy in Schools on July 13, 2009 under the title, "Benefits and Costs of School-based Activities." Brent said he does not think the results would have been much different had the study been conducted more recently, since he continues to see headlines about districts entering into such contracts. "I'm an ex-CPA, so I recognize generally that with revenues there are costs," he said. "In reading an article that says there's a $1.5 million contract, I know the way to think about that is 'over the life of the contract'," he said.  

Brent acknowledges the pressure districts are under to get better results with budgets that are tight. "It's going to be continual issue for school districts striving to meet increasing demands, constrained not necessarily by the economy, but by local and state governments about what's perceived to be high levels of spending," he said.

Michael Griffith, the school finance consultant for the Education Commission of the States, agreed, saying he hears this from school districts across the country. "It's a decision school principals and superintendents have to make: is it worth it to raise these funds, and what are they going to use it for, or does it make sense to go to the voters," he said.

While the alternative revenue tends to be very small, Griffith maintains that districts would view it as important.  "Twenty years ago it was simply money you went out and raised to buy equipment like swings and jungle gyms. Now, in some districts, it's used for hiring librarians and music teachers," he said.






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Please watch the video feed of these important discussions.  The Gates Foundation and corporations are funding a media blitz and sending out research data on their policies that are proving time and again to be false.  Maryland unfortunately is controlled by neo-liberals and neo-cons working for corporations and is advancing these education privatization policies.

WE HAVE TOO MUCH SILENCE FROM OUR PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND STUDENTS.  THERE IS WIDESPREAD PROTEST AROUND THE NATION AND WE WANT THE SAME HERE IN MARYLAND.

Please organize community action groups this fall to plan and develop organizing strategies!




Coming Saturday, Oct.11

PUBLIC Education Nation
Panel #1: Testing & the Common Core    
 

Just Two Weeks Away! The first-ever PUBLIC Education Nation

 

This time we own the table, and we will bring together educators, parents and students to tell the truth about what is happening in our schools, and what real reform ought to be all about.

Next Sunday, October 5, will be our major money bomb online fundraiser for the event. This is NOT sponsored by the Gates, Bloomberg or Walton foundations - it is sponsored by US - each and every person who cares about the future of public education. Please donate here, and spread the word.

  

If you are in the New York area, and would like to attend the October 11 event in person, please show up by 11:30 am at 610 Henry St at Brooklyn New School/Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies, and register here in advance. You can also sign up for the online event on Facebook here.   

Follow us on Twitter at @PublicEdNation & @NetworkPublicEd  

Panel #1: Testing & the Common Core 

  One of the highlights of the event will be the very first panel, Testing and the Common Core, which will be moderated by New York's high school Principal of the Year, Carol Burris. Burris has written extensively about equity in schools and the impact of the Common Core, and will bring her many years as an educator to the table. She will be joined by the following education experts:

Alan A. Aja, Ph.D. is the Assistant Professor & Deputy Chair of the Department of Puerto Rican & Latino Studies in Brooklyn College. His research examines race, gender and class disparities  between and among Latino and African American communities; immigration/education policy; social and economic segregation; sustainable development and collective action/unionization. Before academia, Aja worked as a labor organizer in Texas, an environmental researcher in Cuba, a human rights organizer in Argentina and in a refugee hostel in London. He is a public school parent and elected member of the SLT (School Leadership Team) of PS264 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. 

Dr. Aja will discuss the impact of common core aligned testing in New York, Kentucky and other states on marginalized communities, with attention to blacks, Latinos, ELLs, special ed/learning and disability students. He will present the early evidence to demonstrate that the Common Core and its testing is not resulting in the closing of the achievement gap, but may, instead be leaving disadvantaged students even further behind. He will also discuss alternative ways to increase student and school performance.

 

Rosa L. Rivera-McCutchen, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at CUNY's Lehman College.  She began her career in education as a high school teacher in the Bronx.Her research examines the theory and practice of leadership in small schools in urban settings in order to create socially just and equitable schools for Black and Latino students. Dr. Rivera-McCutchen's research has appeared in an edited book entitled Critical small schools: Beyond privatization in New York City urban educational reform.

Dr. Rivera McCutchen will focus on the moral imperative of leading for social justice in the face of CCSS and high-stakes testing. She will highlight the challenges leaders face in resisting, and focus on the strategies that leaders have used in mounting successful campaigns of resistance.

 

Takiema Bunche Smith is the Vice President of Education and Outreach at Brooklyn Kindergarten Society (BKS), where she oversees educational programming and outreach initiatives at five preschools located in low-income neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York. In both her professional and personal life, Ms. Bunche Smith is involved in various advocacy efforts that relate to early childhood care and education funding and policy, and the push-back against the overemphasis on high stakes testing in public schools. She has been a classroom teacher, teacher educator, content director for Sesame Street, and director of curriculum and instruction. She attended NYC public schools for 3rd-12th grade and is now a public school parent and member of the SLT at Brooklyn New School. 

Ms. Bunche Smith will discuss the early childhood education implications of the Common Core and how it affects schools, students and parents.  She will discuss various parent perspectives on the Common Core as well as critically highlight those who are not part of the conversation around Common Core.

On Saturday, Oct. 11, you can tune in online here at SchoolhouseLive.org to the live broadcast starting at 12 noon Eastern time, 9 am Pacific time. 

 

The event will conclude with a conversation between Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown.   

The Network for Public Education is hosting this event. It is NOT sponsored by the Gates, Walton or Bloomberg foundations. It is sponsored by YOU, each and every one of the people who care about our children's future.  

 

Can you make a small donation to help us cover the expense of this event? We are determined to create the space not ordinarily given to voices like these. But we need your participation. Please donate by visiting the NPE website and clicking on the PayPal link.

A live-stream of the event will be available on Saturday, Oct. 11, starting at Noon Eastern time, 9 am Pacific time at  http://www.schoolhouselive.org.

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This is just one county in Maryland plagued by the privatization of public education with billions of dollars in education funding going to private education corporations....

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT MODEL AS IF WE CANNOT FIGURE THAT OUT OURSELVES!



Friday, July 11, 2014

Another $103,000 for Pearson!
#Australiatripwithpurchase


At the June 30, 2014, Board of Education (BOE) meeting the BOE members voted to send another check to Pearson.


4343.1The SOIP Model Professional Development




Awardee




NCS Pearson, Inc. $103,000
http://www.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/9LCJCD4B1F31/$file/6.1%20Contracts%2025K%20or%20More.pdf

Now, while the BOE is sending checks to Pearson how much is MCPS getting back in royalties from our super cool deal with Pearson? Anyone buying Pearson Forward?  Has MCPS received any royalties?

Here's how much of the MCPS Operating Budget has gone to Pearson related companies since 2010.


$5,569,613 


The Washington Post 2011

But, remember Superintendent Jerry Weast got a fabulous trip to Australia from the Pearson Foundation!  That was worth $5.5 million...



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In Baltimore, it is the Maryland ACLU leading the way with the same policy and it is DEFINITELY UNCONSTITUTIONAL.  Everyone should fight this process as Wall Street is only using underserved schools as a charter privatization of the entire public education system.  Poor communities often do not have advocates working to protect their interests so we need everyone shouting that what is happening in Baltimore is bad for Maryland.  They will expand this charter platform across Maryland!

Baltimore's selective enrollment is not centralized but does involve lotteries that are not provided oversight and are geared towards development and gentrification.  Equal Opportunity does not have to preclude development but it does have to provide equal access.  As with New Orleans, Baltimore's school privatization involves corporate control of funding and curricula producing winners and losers.  Tiered per student funding places special needs children at the bottom of the funding scale THAT SHOULD BE EQUAL.

PLEASE DO NOT ALLOW WALL STREET USE RACE AND/OR CLASS TO SNEAK IN AND PRIVATIZE ALL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION.  WHAT IS INJUSTICE FOR ONE WILL BECOME INJUSTICE FOR ALL!


U.S. Education Department opens civil rights investigation of New Orleans public school closures

Cristi Wijngaarde revs the crowd up with a bullhorn as groups meet on the median in front of Sarah T. Reed High School to protest school closure, Monday, December 9, 2013. The closure of that school prompted a federal civil rights complaint. According to a letter, the federal government has opened an investigation. (Ted Jackson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune) Print By Danielle Dreilinger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

on September 24, 2014 at 12:18 PM, updated September 24, 2014 at 7:26 PM


  The U.S. Education Department has opened an investigation into charges that the Recovery School District's policy of closing and chartering New Orleans public schools violated the civil rights of African-American students. The complaint, filed in May, said African-American students were disproportionately affected by the Recovery system's decision to close its final five conventional public schools in New Orleans, and that the system did not provide good alternatives for displaced students.

The Education Department's Office of Civil Rights "has determined the allegations are appropriate for investigation," wrote Paul Coxe, regional civil rights supervisor, in a letter that the complainants shared with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Coxe emphasized that "opening the allegations for investigation in no way implies that OCR has made a determination with regard to the merits."

It could be months before the investigation ends, although the Education Department aims to "resolve complaints within 180 days of their receipt," a federal official said. Complex cases might take longer.

Louisiana Education Superintendent John White said that in the past six years, the federal Office of Civil Rights has resolved 42 of 76 complaints alleging racially discriminatory school closures but required systemic changes in only one case. Raymonde Charles of the U.S. Education Department confirmed the data.

Bradshaw said the federal department aims to "resolve complaints within 180 days of their receipt," though complex cases may take longer.

Among the May allegations were:

  • The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and Recovery system have closed conventional public schools -- which are almost 100 percent African-American -- even when they are improving, but allowed their few whiter schools to remain open despite struggles with academics and management.
  • New Orleans' best public schools have policies that tacitly exclude African-American students. For instance, Edward Hynes and Lusher give priority admission to families who live in their comparatively white neighborhoods.
  • OneApp, the centralized enrollment system for Recovery system and Orleans Parish School Board schools, has become an instrument for exclusion because the best schools aren't on it.
Furthermore, the complaint asserts, it's no accident. "The racial disparity caused by RSD's policy of school closures, authorized by BESE and implemented by LDOE, provides circumstantial evidence of intentional discrimination," the complaint says.

Recovery Superintendent Patrick Dobard disagreed. "Our system of schools in New Orleans seeks to protect the basic civil rights of all students to receive a quality education," he said. "We are confident that the USDOE's OCR shares our commitment to ensuring all students in New Orleans have access to a high-quality school." He also said the percentage of New Orleans' African American youth in failing schools had plummeted since 2005.  

A Board of Elementary and Secondary Education spokesman, Kevin Calbert, would not comment on the investigation. 

In May, White dismissed the complaint as "a joke," saying it was part of a national, politically motivated push by labor unions to regain power in cities where they have lost ground or are fighting with education leadership. Similar complaints were filed the same day against Chicago and Newark, N.J. The U.S. Education Department has also opened investigations in those cities, a federal official said. 

White said the state has no control over most of the city's selective and disproportionately white public schools, including Hynes and Lusher. They are overseen by the local Orleans Parish School Board. 

In 2012-13, 86 percent of the city's public school students were African-American, 7 percent were white, according to Tulane University's Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives. 

The New Orleans complaint was authored by the national Advancement Project and two local education advocacy groups, Coalition for Community Schools and Conscious Concerned Citizens Controlling Community Changes. Taking the lead for the local groups were Karran Harper Royal and Frank Buckley, longtime opponents of the state takeover of 80 percent of New Orleans' public schools after  Hurricane Katrina.

_____________________________________________

Fordham is the education privatization Foundation that promotes the policies implemented in Baltimore City by Johns Hopkins.  Below you see how data supporting these policies are being nixed by a wide group of education researchers.

LET'S DO THIS!  LET'S DO THAT!  Say corporate education policy-makers using absolutely no education data or history of classroom/child performance.  That is what public policy by corporations looks like.  They are being allowed to not pay taxes, to 'donate' to education non-profits that then support these ideas.  Meanwhile education standards and achievement are falling fast and we are losing good teachers who do not want to be exposed to bad education policy.

School choice has nothing to do with giving children more choices.  It does not even succeed in its goal of segregated schools bringing higher achievement.  We need to demand Equal Opportunity and Access and strong public schools to allow everyone an opportunity to CHOOSE what their futures will look like.


What this policy below has as a goal is selling designer lessons to students with captions describing what kind of child will benefit from this kind of lesson. Global education corporations while design these lessons and sell them to school administrators looking like a cart of cable TV choices.


IT IS RIDICULOUS AND IS MEANT ONLY TO CREATE MARKETS THAT WILL THEN TAKE PUBLIC EDUCATION FUNDING.


.
Fordham Puts Lots of Little Choice Carts before the Evidence Horse

Report describes how to bring school choice to the level of individual classes – but it never considers research regarding whether this would be beneficial Contact:  William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net Patricia Burch, (909) 272-5839, pburch@usc.edu
  URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/lua4872

BOULDER, CO (June 19, 2014) – A recent report provides guidelines for an expansion of school choice policies, urging policymakers to turn the selection of school classes themselves into a form of market competition, with each student choosing and designing a personal menu of classes.


The drawback to that idea, according to a new review, is that the report makes no effort to evaluate the underlying proposal before offering policymakers a “guide” for how to put it into effect.

 
Patricia Burch of the University of Southern California, along with Jahni Smith of USC and Mary Stewart of Indiana University, reviewed Expanding the Education Universe: A Fifty-State Strategy for Course Choice for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review is published today by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education.

Expanding the Education Universe, written by Michael Brickman and published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute,

envisions a future when students design their own selection of online and off-line school classes. As the reviewers note, the report possesses a great deal of confidence that such a change would ease transportation and expand students’ options in many beneficial ways. Course providers for the proposed system could be for-profit as well as not-for-profit providers, including school districts and other public institutions.

But in offering a “guide” to solve practical problems of policy and implementation, the report acts with undue haste. It “assumes, without solid evidence, that course choice, electronic educational provisions, and the like are viable, effective, and proven methods,” the reviewers write. 

“No direct research is presented, and relevant related research that might support the efficacy of the method is not included,” Burch and her colleagues point out. “Accordingly, the piece rests entirely on assumptions and assertions.”

Lacking the necessary evidence and detail to demonstrate that the proposal holds any promise, policymakers and the public should lack confidence in the report’s proposal. The report, the reviewers conclude, offers “little basis for assessing the benefits and liabilities of a program that potentially has enormous financial costs and educational quality implications for public education.”

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Below you see the ultimate disrespect Maryland Assembly and local governments are paying to students, parents, and communities.  Neo-liberals and neo-cons seem to think public schools need to gain their own funding any way they can while corporations don't pay taxes and get huge subsidy.  This is how far it has gone....cell towers on public school roofs with the cell tower businesses not paying taxes because they are located on public property----think M and T Stadium and Ravens football.  All of this is really, really, really, really bad public policy but it maximizes profit says neo-liberals and neo-cons!

Keep in mind these are the politicians that labor union and justice organization leaders support each election.



Milestone Won't Pay Property Taxes on Cell Towers - Board Responds to Parents' Coalition

Posted: 09 Jul 2014 08:03 PM PDT

Why should Milestone Communications cell towers pay property taxes in Maryland?  
(Remember, this is the Doug Duncan "no brainer" deal.)

Well, it's only a Maryland regulation! But, who needs tax regulations?  Apparently not the Anne Arundel County Board of Education. 
Today, the Anne Arundel County Board of Education discussed the placement of a Milestone Communications cell tower on the Magothy River and Severn River Middle Schools site.  Listen to the discussion in the video below.
  • First, you will hear a Anne Arundel Board member state that there is a federal "obligation" that cell towers be built on public school playgrounds (minute 6 of video).  Really? Exactly what federal law says that?
  • Second, you will hear the Anne Arundel Board members discuss an e-mail from the Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, MD (minute 9 of video, Parents Coalition mentioned at 11:30 of video) alerting them to the fact that the one cell tower already in operation in their county at Broadneck High School does not have a tax account id number and is not paying property taxes.  A Milestone Communications representative is sitting right at the table in front of the Board while they discuss this issue.  Listen as the school administrators and Milestone Communications representative waive away any responsibility for paying property taxes on cell towers located on public school land.  It's only property taxes.  Who cares if Milestone doesn't pay the property taxes on their for-profit cell towers? 
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September 28th, 2014

9/28/2014

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LOOK AT WHAT US MEDIA AND POLLS ARE SAYING ABOUT ONE POLICY ISSUE----TPP AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THE REAL POLICY STANCE IS-----THE US IS OPENLY PRESENTING FALSE DATA ON THE FEELINGS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE JUST AS AN AUTOCRATIC NATION WOULD.


Needless to say it is the capture of labor and justice organizations nationally that have created the lack of political dialog and education for Americans about all of policy issues unlike nations around the world that are organizing and protesting by the millions.  Let's take a look at elections around the world and how people are reacting to issues like global corporate control of government, financial and corporate frauds and attack on public wealth, and Trans Pacific Trade Pact.  Remember, the candidates for Governor of Maryland, whether neo-liberal or neo-con, mention NONE of the issues above in campaigning.  That is how you know you have global corporate pols.

I shared the article about Europe's elections and how they are really pushing out the incumbents that gave them the bailing out of the banks and austerity to pay for massive corporate fraud.  Nationalists, anti-immigrant, anti-corporate, and the media coverage is wide-spread.  In the US, we don't even know these protests and election results are happening from mainstream media and certainly no mention of these protests and election results being tied in part to Trans Pacific and Atlantic Trade deals.

WE CAN REVERSE ALL OF THIS CORPORATE CONTROL BY TAKING BACK THE PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC PARTY FROM GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERALS.  THEY ARE NOT LIBERALS----THEY ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE---THEY ARE SIMPLY CORPORATE PROFIT.

I know the people of Philippines wanted US military out and they resent having their citizens as immigrant workers so I doubt they want TPP!

TPP Push: Clinton’s visit to Asean: Philippines and Thailand

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is visiting the Philippines on 15 November 2011 to initiate the Obama administration’s Partnership for Growth (PFG) program for devising measures to facilitate trade and investments in conflict, poverty and graft stricken countries such as Tanzania, El Salvador and Ghana. She will visit Thailand on 17 November.

Clinton’s one-day visit will also highlight the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Philippine-US Mutual Defense Treaty and pave the way for new strategies to ensure peace and stability in the region particularly in the disputed areas of the West Philippine Sea where Chinese military intrusions have been increasing of late.

The PFG launching comes amid the Philippines’ efforts to strengthen measures to implement economic reforms and improve trade policies, in order to qualify for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement that facilitates trade and investments between the US and four members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Brunei.



Backflip on Thailand TPP membership talks

In an apparent backflip on a proposed Thailand TPP membership application Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on Saturday that she will not be discussing an application to join the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact with US President Barack Obama when he visits the country on Sunday.



Thailand’s TPP application threatens to overshadow Presidential visit

Bangkok is abuzz at the imminent visit of freshly re-elected US President Barack Obama on a whirlwind three-nation tour to shore up US support in the region, however trade discussions threaten to overshadow the stated purpose of the visit, a courtesy call to mark 180 years of Thai-US relations.

While details such as the number of security personnel to be deployed (more than 1,000), snipers being stationed on Bangkok rooftops (nothing new in that) and details such as the US President travels with his own bottled water supply and his advance team are concerned about giant water monitors at Government House have proved entertaining reading, it is trade that is capturing the most interest.



On Monday the Thailand government announced that it will hold negotiations with the US over the possibility of joining the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.

The announcement has seen a flurry of opposition from academics, economists, and interest groups with Aat Pisanwanich, dean of the School of Economics at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce warning Thailand’s service sector is not competitive enough to become a part of the TPP.


Mr Aat also claimed financial institutions will be adversely affected under the TPP, as too would Thailand’s technology sector.

Also voicing concerns about Thailand’s intention to signup for the TPP is Thailand’s central bank, the Bank of Thailand (BoT), warning that joining the TPP could hamper regulations on capital flows and financial services.



In a paper prepared on the TPP Harit Rodprasert, a senior BoT economist warned that although capital inflows promote investment and economic development, they could lead to volatility and a bubble in the property sector or a liquidity shortage during capital flight. Sound familiar????

Former Thailand prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has also urged a cautionary approach, calling on the government to clarity the negotiating framework as the TPP would have a substantial impact on Thailand.

Wise words considering that when President Obama announced the USAs intention to join the TPP in 2009 he told Congress that negotiations would shape “a new kind of trade agreement for the 21st century, bringing home the jobs and economic opportunity we want all our trade deals to deliver”.

TPP more than just tariffs and exchange of goods Advocacy groups globally have protested at what little is known about provisions of the TPP.

Apart from patchy details of controversial clauses leaked to the public little is known about the 26 provisions of the TPP, an expansion of the 2005 Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, but these leaks have been enough to see widespread opposition from advocacy groups, and elected officials globally.

So worrying are some aspects of the TPP and the secrecy surrounding its scope that independent news and advocacy organisations have described it as The Most Important Trade Agreement That We Know Nothing About and A Worldwide Corporate Power Grab of Enormous Proportions.

In August a bipartisan group of US lawmakers sent a letter to the the top US trade negotiator “in the strongest possible terms” demanding details of the TPP, particularly in relation to its intellectual property provisions.

Criticism and protests over restrictions imposed by the TPP have been voiced globally since its inception in 2007 and despite claims the pact now has 11 members, only the four original signatories – Chile, New Zealand, Singapore and later Brunei – are full members, while the United States, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, and Canada are still negotiating the terms of the TPPs various clauses.

So far 14 meetings have been held attempting to thrash out the pact, with the 15th to be held between December 3 to 12, 2012, in Auckland, New Zealand.

Anti-globalists, privacy groups, and human rights advocacy groups internationally claim the TPP goes far beyond the realm of tariff reduction and trade promotion, granting unprecedented power to corporations and infringing upon consumer, labor, and environmental interests.

TPP strengthens patent protection for drugs more than any trade agreement Part of an Infographic on the TPP prepared by the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (click to see full infographic)

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF), a highly respected and long-established defender of consumers digital rights says the TPP “threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement”.

According to the EFF US negotiators are “pursuing a TPP agreement that will require signatory countries to adopt heightened copyright protection that advances the agenda of the US entertainment and pharmaceutical industries”.

Human rights group Amnesty International says the TPP “neglects protections for fair use and standard judicial guarantees – such as the presumption of innocence – and includes copyright provisions that could compromise free speech on the internet and access to educational materials.

“Draft TPP provisions related to patents for pharmaceuticals risk stifling the development and production of generic medicines by strengthening and deepening monopoly protections” the group said ahead of the 14th round of negotiations in September.

In a detailed article on the TPP in the respected journal Nature, science journalist Amy Maxmen said previously leaked documents indicate the “TPP looks likely to strengthen patent protection for drugs more than any trade agreement so far.

Nature warns that “some countries may be tempted to forgo access to generic drugs in exchange for better access to US markets in other industries.

Respected Science journalist Amy Maxmen said in Nature “some countries may be tempted to forgo access to generic drugs in exchange for better access to US markets” Photo: Courtesy Scientific American

in a 2011 report addressing the TPP Médecins Sans Frontières (also known as Doctors Without Borders) says that counties which have rejected patents on new formulations of the off-patent HIV drug Abacavir now sell generic versions for as little as $US139 per person per year, whereas in Malaysia pediatric Abacavir costs $1,200 per child per year, because the country granted the new formulation a patent.

“The first generation of HIV drugs have come down in price by 99 percent over the last decade, from $10,000 per person per year in 2000 to roughly $60 today, thanks to generic production in India, Brazil and Thailand where these drugs were not patented.

“About 80 percent of donor- funded anti-AIDS drugs and 92 percent of drugs to treat children with AIDS across the developing world comes from generic manufacturers” MSF says.


Despite the mounting levels of concern and lack of any public debate the Thailand Ministry of Commerce says the government will hold a press conference to formally affirm its commitment to seek membership of the TPP during the the US President’s visit.

The old adage that one should be wary of Greeks bearing gifts is somewhat dated and in the 21-st century, with pressure to create jobs and increase exports, one should perhaps be be more wary of US President’s bestowing the honour of an official visit than wooden horses.
___________________________________________

I want to show the spin that US media is presenting to the American people that is so overt and biased that it shows why Americans have no idea what policies mean even to US citizens.

Thailand is just one of among a dozen or so nations global corporations are trying to bring into this trade deal -----the people are determined to keep it out of their country with leaders in place ready to deal.  Thailand is a good example of how successful citizen protest can be as the Prime Minister did end up backing away from TPP talks.  Hopefully the Thai protesters will be able to send this PM packing and elect a pol looking out for the people's interest and not the oligarchs of the country.

Below you see CNN media outlet telling Americans what all that protesting in Thailand is about.  Never once do they mention that the middle and upper class are fighting to keep TPP out because they know it will surrender that nation to loss of sovereignty and wealth.  Shinawatra is simply a relative of a billionaire business tycoon enriched by taking over Thailand's communications sector much like the Russian oligarchs.  He is fraudulent and corrupt---autocratic and wanting to sell out his nation to maximize his corporate profits.   The poor are fighting for the very person and policy that will kill the nation and further impoverish those supporting it.  The poor are brought out to protest for Thanksin and TPP while the middle class and affluent are determined to send Thanksin and his farm team out because they know TPP will steal all of their wealth.
  Thailand's poor do not know what the handing of national sovereignty to global corporations will mean.


10 questions: What's behind the protests in Thailand?

By Jethro Mullen, CNN updated 11:18 PM EST, Tue November 26, 2013 Thai protesters march to oust government STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • At the heart of the unrest is the polarizing figure of Thaksin Shinawatra
  • His sister is now prime minister, and critics say she's his puppet
  • A recent move to grant amnesty to Thaksin and others caused anger
  • Protesters say they won't stop until "Thaksin's regime is wiped out"
Are you in Thailand? Send us your pictures and experiences but please stay safe.

(CNN) -- In order to understand the turbulent world of Thai politics, you have to start with one name: Thaksin Shinawatra.

The former prime minister has dominated the country's political scene for more than a decade despite going into exile after his ouster in a 2006 coup.

Back in 2010, deadly clashes took place between security forces and Thaksin supporters who had occupied central Bangkok. They were demanding his return.

Now, his sister is in power and she recently tried to pass an amnesty law that could have allowed his return. The attempt failed, but it provided fuel for the current protests shaking the capital.


Here's a quick primer to make sense of it all.

Thai protesters stage huge rallies Tensions tighten in Thailand Thailand PM defies critics 1. Who is Thaksin?

He's a deeply polarizing figure -- a billionaire telecommunications mogul who built his political power on policies popular with Thailand's rural villagers. His success ruffled a lot of feathers among the country's established elites, and critics accused him of corruption and autocratic rule. He was prime minister between 2001 and 2006, when the military deposed him in a bloodless coup.

2. What happened in 2010?

Thaksin's ouster spurred the protest movement that developed over the years into the widespread "red shirt" demonstrations that occupied upscale parts of Bangkok in 2010. By that stage, the movement had broadened to represent other issues, including resentment at the military's involvement in politics and economic inequality. The crackdown by security forces on the red shirts resulted in clashes that left around 90 people dead. It has been described as the worst civil violence in Thailand's history, and the country remains severely scarred by the experience.

3. Could the current protests lead to a repeat?

The situation is different this time.

Those protesting are opponents of Thaksin rather than his supporters. His sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is now prime minister. Her government is under pressure after widespread anger over its recent failed attempt to pass a bill that could have granted amnesty to Thaksin and others.

Although the public has generally moved on from the conflict over the amnesty bill, the opposition Democrat Party is trying to use the issue to bring down Yingluck's government, says Paul Quaglia, director of the Bangkok-based risk assessment firm PQA Associates.

"The government is facing probably a countdown until it will have to dissolve and hold new elections," Quaglia says. "But it doesn't look like it's a replay of 2010 when we're going to see violence in the streets and an extended takeover of central Bangkok."

4. What has Thaksin been up to?

He has been living in exile in a number of different places, most recently Dubai, while continuing to play an active role in Thai politics.

He briefly returned to Thailand in 2008. Later that year, he was convicted by a Thai court of corruption and sentenced in absentia to two years in prison over a controversial land deal. Courts have also frozen billions of dollars of his assets, but he is believed to still have a great deal of money held elsewhere.

He's also stayed heavily involved in Thai politics over the years, communicating with supporters via social media and video messages. With his younger sister in power since 2011, his influence remains strong. Critics say Yingluck is Thaksin's puppet, but she insists she has always been independent.



5. What is happening this week?

After weeks of demonstrations, thousands of protesters have gathered around government buildings in central Bangkok, occupying some of them for varying periods of time. Yingluck has expanded the area in and around Bangkok covered by an internal security law that gives police extra powers to disband protesters. In parliament, the Prime Minister is facing a "no confidence" motion against her. And police have issued an arrest warrant against protest leader, Suthep Thaugsuban.

For most of Bangkok, business as usual despite protests

6. What's at stake for the region?

The demonstrations are bringing instability once again to Thailand, a key regional economy and popular tourist destination. The protests are centered on Bangkok, a vital transportation hub, especially for air travel. So far, the protests are concentrated in specific parts of the city. More than a dozen countries have issued travel warnings for citizens to avoid areas near protests in Bangkok.

7. What do the demonstrators want?

Suthep Thaugsuban, a former deputy prime minister under the previous Democrat-led government, has said the demonstrations "will not stop until Thaksin's regime is wiped out." Such an aim seems ambitious. Yingluck's government was democratically elected and her Pheu Thai party retains support in its core areas. The current protests have echoes of 2008 when demonstrators opposed to a pro-Thaksin government occupied Bangkok's main airport and government offices.

8. Where are the protesters getting their support from?

Opposition to Thaksin and Yingluck is strongest among the urban elites and middle class. That means the capital.

"Bangkok is the ground zero for anti-Thaksin protest movements," Quaglia says. "The rest of the country, other than southern Thailand, is either in his camp or sort of politically neutral." That's why the recent demonstrations have been concentrated in the streets of the capital.

9. What's the government's support base?

Thaksin's traditional support comes from the populous rural areas of north and northeast of Thailand. The government's botched amnesty move may have hurt its standing in those areas, but not fatally.

"Despite the pictures of thousands of people in the street that doesn't necessarily mean the government will go -- or if it does go, that it will lose the next election," Quaglia says.

10. What is likely to happen next?

Questions remain over the ability of Yingluck's government to maintain order in the capital and weather the heavy political pressure in Parliament. Some observers are concerned that government supporters, tens of thousands of whom rallied in Bangkok on Sunday, could clash with opposition demonstrators.

Yingluck has said authorities would "absolutely not use violence" to disperse the demonstrators.

Even if Yingluck survives the "no confidence" motion against her, the situation appears unlikely to calm down soon.

"We're going to see political instability here for some time," Quaglia says.
________________________________________

Hmmmm....missing Malaysian airliners and tensions growing and US media seems to tell us that everything is moving forward with TPP-----Did you know TPP is illegal and a COUP against the Constitution and the American people?  That is why millions around the world are marching and voting pols out of office and it is why in the US Clinton is pushing his farm team in state and local levels as hard as possible because these global corporate pols will build the government structures needed to hand all power of policy to global corporations.

Does this headline tell you what the media article leads you to believe?
  Scrambling to find justifications for TPP.......meanwhile many Americans do not even know how TPP will affect them.


1.8 Million People Call For TPP To Be Made Public


By Fuseworks Media, www.voxy.co.nz
June 4th, 2014

  Powered by Translate 22 A petition of more than 1.8 million people worldwide, calling for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to be made public has been delivered to Australia’s Parliament this morning.



Japan Remains Hotbed of TPP Protest as U.S. Tries to Fast-Track Trade Deal, Crush Environmental Laws

Japan has been a hotbed of protest against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would establish a free-trade zone stretching from Japan to the United States to Chile, and encompass nearly 40 percent of the global economy.


'the perceived value of being a part of the TPP has been gradually diminishing for those countries. While corporate interests may have driven these countries to the negotiating table, public outcry might be starting to pull these countries back away from the table'.


Malaysia Rejecting TPP as Agreement Causes Political Turmoil in Australia


  • Written By Drew Wilson
  • August 14, 2012 | 
There’s been plenty of developments in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in the last week which is worth noting. Malaysia is currently rejecting the TPP. Meanwhile, the Australian government is getting a fresh round of criticisms from opposition parties over the latest revelations from the recent leak.The Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that would, among other things, institute a global ISP level regime and three strikes law, allow corporations of any kind to operate above a countries local laws so long as their headquarters is located outside the country and further restrict limitations afforded to consumers in various countries (and that’s likely just the tip of the iceberg), has been back in the news once again for a number of reasons.

We begin with the more dramatic developments coming out of Malaysia where the country is reportedly getting increasingly sceptical of the agreement altogether. From The Sun Daily:

Malaysia is against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) which seeks to extend the patent periods of medicines by foreign companies.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said the agreement, which is being negotiated among eleven countries including the US and Malaysia, would be detrimental to the local medical industry.

“We are against the patent extension. According to the agreement, if a medicine is launched in the US, and then three years later it is launched in Malaysia, the patent would start from when it is launched here and not when it was launched earlier in the US,” said Liow. “This is not fair.”

He stressed that the agreement would in effect make healthcare less affordable to the public.

Malaysia is not the first jurisdiction to possibly want out of the TPP as some municipalities and even a whole territory in Canada have been voicing either their concerns or want to be exempt altogether from the agreement. However, Malaysia may be the first country to announce their opposition to the agreement. It’s significant because there now are signs that cracks from within the agreement are steadily growing as negotiations go along. Signs of cracks and divisions within the TPP have surfaced since June, but they were never so pronounced that a countries government is publicly announcing their opposition altogether before to my knowledge.

Meanwhile, the TPP is causing major political headaches in Australia. It is seemingly mirroring the kind of political turmoil seen in New Zealand from back in June. The Australian Green Party is pressing the government on why it’s simply towing the US line in the agreement. From Computerworld:

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam has slammed the federal government for continuing to pursue the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is currently undergoing negotiation.

[...]

Ludlam stated the Federal Government is “hell-bent” on locking Australia into a dead-end copyright treaty.

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, if the USA gets its way, will cause huge problems for Australians, but our Federal Government is backing Washington to the hilt,” he said in a statement.

“Not content with supporting the ill-fated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement [ACTA], which would endanger the legal status of generic medicines and was overwhelmingly rejected by the European Parliament, the trade minister is now pushing for an Agreement that offers no protection for copyright exceptions enshrined in Australian law.

“ACTA was an absolute dud, and the Government wanted to jump on board before the Australian Law Reform Commission’s inquiry had even warmed up.”

The charges have thrown the Australian government onto the defensive as they try to defend their record on the TPP. From ITNews:

a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) argued that Australia’s support for copyright limitations and exceptions was consistent with “existing international obligations”.

While not denying the substance of the leaks, she said the discussion on limitations and exceptions were still under negotiation. Revised text on copyright limitations and exceptions has been tabled as recently as the last round, in July 2012.

The spokeswoman said Australia would not accept an outcome in the TPP that reduced its ability to enact copyright limitations and exceptions under Australian domestic law.

“Australia’s positions in the intellectual property chapter have been, and continue to be, informed by a wide range of relevant stakeholder views and perspectives,” she said.

The Attorney-General’s Department has undertaken a review on the technological protection measures available to Australians to bypass copyright measures, such as removing region coding on DVDs.

While the Australian government has been trying to find ways of calming the critics of the TPP by deflecting criticisms against it, it also seems to be scrambling to justify the TPP in the first place. One option the government is considering is a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis. This seems to be a direct response to the the Pirate Party of Australia who, back in May, argued that the TPP has no economic benefits at all. Of course, the natural question for me would be, why did the Australian government wait all this time before trying to find reasons why the TPP is suppose to be all good for the Australian people? Wouldn’t it have made sense to look at the earliest proposals and try to figure out what’s in it for Australia before signing up and being a part of the negotiation for all these years? to me, it’s a little backwards to sign up for an agreement, negotiate the provisions, pretty much agree with everything the US is saying, ratify it, then figure out why the agreement is good for Australia.

Japan, interestingly enough, is also having second thoughts on the TPP in general. While it seems that the Japanese government is interested in the TPP, there is hesitation on joining the talks due to domestic political reasons – namely the fear of politicians from the governing party defecting in protest of the TPP. From Yomiuri:

Amid prolonged political turmoil, it has become nearly impossible for Japan to join talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade accord before the end of this year.

To take part in the round of TPP negotiations scheduled for early December–the last for this year–the government and ruling parties must reach a consensus by the end of August, as it will take 90 days for the U.S. Congress to approve Japan’s entry.

[...]

The government had planned to make quick preparations for joining the TPP talks by coordinating opinions among relevant bodies after enacting bills on the integrated reform of the social security and tax systems. An official announcement regarding Japan’s participation had been planned for a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum scheduled for September or another occasion.

However, at Wednesday’s meeting between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and main opposition leaders–Liberal Democratic Party President Sadakazu Tanigaki and New Komeito leader Natsuo Yamaguchi–Noda referred to an early dissolution of the House of Representatives.

Many within the ruling Democratic Party of Japan remain cautious regarding the TPP issue. If the government pushes ahead with the talks, more lawmakers may leave the ruling parties in addition to those who left to oppose the integrated reform bills.

Overall, it seems that with growing local backlash for each of these countries either thinking of joining the TPP negotiations or are already in them, the perceived value of being a part of the TPP has been gradually diminishing for those countries. While corporate interests may have driven these countries to the negotiating table, public outcry might be starting to pull these countries back away from the table.

_____________________________________

Below you see the US Trade Team using a poll to show support by the US public for TPP.  If you remember 80% of Americans are against Citizens United----both Republican and Democrat and TPP is Citizens United on steroids.

These polling corporations are no longer scientific or unbiased----they are being used to sell policy both in the US and abroad.  Democratic voters love ending our rights as citizens and re-writing WE THE PEOPLE OUT AND WE THE CORPORATIONS IN---SAY THIS POLL.


This poll is propaganda used to pressure Japanese politicians by selling the idea to Japanese citizens that Americans love these trade deals.  How many people in the US know about these trade deals do you think?  Also, look at how this article places US Congress as working against the interests of the citizens by delaying and fighting TPP. 

THIS IS ALL PROPAGANDA AND IT IS USED AS A REASON FOR CONGRESS TO VOTE FOR POLICY THAT KILLS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.


Americans Support the TPP, Trade With Japan

According to a new poll, the majority of Americans support joining the TPP, and even more want more trade with Japan.

By Zachary KeckApril 29, 2014 351 44 0 0 394 Shares17 Comments A majority of Americans want the U.S. to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to a new poll.

On the eve of President Barack Obama’s trip to Asia last week, the Pew Research Center released a new public opinion poll it had conducted on Americans’ views of the TPP, the major free trade pact being negotiated between 12 Pacific Rim nations.

As Pew explained the result “A recent survey from the Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans (55%) believe the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a good thing, while just 25% think the agreement will be bad for the country and 19% don’t have an opinion.”

That is slightly more than the percentage of Americans who support the TPP’s European counterpart, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). According to a Pew poll taken earlier this month, just 53 percent of Americans view the TPIP as a positive thing for their country.

U.S. support for the TPP is also greater than support for growing trade ties with China.
Pew also reported last week that in a recent survey only 51 percent of Americans advocated for greater trade with China compared with 45 percent who were against expanded commerce with Beijing. At the same time, Pew found greater U.S. support for trade in the abstract than for the TPP, TTIP or trade with China. According to Pew, no less than 74 percent of Americans recently told pollsters that greater trade is a good thing for their country.

The sizeable support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the United States appears to be driven largely by a desire among the American public to expand trade ties with Japan. As Pew explained: “Fully 74% in the U.S. say increased trade with Japan would be a good thing, and 29% think it would be very good for the U.S. The belief that increased trade with Japan is a very good thing is shared across the political spectrum and has strong backing among the college-educated, 42% of whom hold that view.”

The widespread support for the TPP in the United States, and especially for expanded trade ties with Japan, is somewhat surprising given that both proposals have been met with fierce resistance from members of Congress. This has been especially true among members of President Obama’s own Democratic Party.

Indeed, last May, 43 Democratic Congress members—including 35 House members and 8 Senators--wrote a letter to President Obama expressing their opposition to Japan joining the TPP talks. Then, in November of last year, a coalition of 151 Democratic House members wrote a letter to Obama to inform him of their opposition to Trade Promotion Authority, which is seen as essential for signing the pact. The 151 Democratic representatives who signed onto the letter account for about 75 percent of the entire Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives.

The fact that the main Congressional opposition to the TPP comes from the Democratic Party is also at odds with the results of Pew’s recent survey, which found that support for the TPP is actually greater among Democrats than Republicans. According to the poll, 59 percent of self-identified Democrats said they support the TPP compared with just 49 percent of Republicans. Self-identified Independents are somewhere in the middle (56 percent support TPP).

The incongruence between the views of the American people and the positions of their representatives in Congress is an increasingly common phenomenon in U.S. politics. One of the more notable recent instances of it was Congress’s failure to pass legislation requiring background checks on all firearm sales despite roughly 90 percent of Americans expressing support for such a law. On the other hand, this phenomenon is not unique to America’s democracy. A November poll by the Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, found that Japan’s population support joining the TPP by a large margin. Nonetheless, special interest group lobbying has hobbled Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s efforts to join the proposed trade pact.


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September 26th, 2014

9/26/2014

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I HOPE NOT TO ALIENATE ANY OF MY LABOR UNION FRIENDS----I REALLY AM A STRONG LABOR AND LABOR UNION ACTIVIST.  WE NEED CHANGE AS UNIONS ARE STARTING TO MIRROR GLOBAL CORPORATE STRUCTURES THAT COMPROMISE THEIR COMMITMENT TO THEIR MEMBERS.


I wanted to finish the talk on labor this time by looking at labor unions and how they are being compromised by the stress of corporate control of government.  I always say-----YOUR LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS KNOW THIS----and they do not all of what I speak----but they are under great pressure to keep union rights in tact.  So, please support labor unions as the strongest solution to holding power accountable.  To keep strong we need union leadership that works for ALL LABOR.  It undermines union support when a labor leader says to me----I am looking out for my union only.  UNITED WE STAND AND DIVIDED WE FALL.  Global corporations and their pols are using every trick in the book to divide!


These are the factions I see being created by pressures from global corporate pols against unions:

I speak to national AFL-CIO about supporting neo-liberals who are killing public sector unions with privatizing schemes.  The AFL-CIO supports Immigration Reform knowing it is tied to Trans Pacific Trade Pact  which will kill all labor.  Trumka knows this reform is not about helping US immigrants.  The AFL-CIO has taken a global corporate structure complete with having a credit union and credit cards.  Credit unions are now operating just like Wall Street banks so it now operates with an eye towards profiting from its consumers just as banks do.  It's international reach now places priority on contracts that create winners and losers with lessening membership voice.  National AFL-CIO will tell me they support public sector unions but it does not show!  These are the reasons the AFL-CIO still goes with neo-liberals each election and this hurts the US membership.  We can have international union support but unions must stay away from these corporate models.  Keep union actions local beyond boycotts please!


WILHELM IS RIGHT!

Wilhelm: AFL-CIO ‘bureaucratic,’ ‘disconnected’ from workers

Alana Roberts

Thursday, July 21, 2005 | 11:04 a.m.

Although John Wilhelm says he won't challenge John Sweeney for the presidency of the AFL-CIO, he levels strong criticism at labor's top official.


Wilhelm, hospitality president of UNITE HERE, parent of Culinary Union Local 226, called the AFL-CIO a bureaucratic organization that is out of touch with the plight of workers.

"I think it's simple, the problem with the AFL-CIO is the AFL-CIO has become a beltway place that has very little connection to where the economic and political action is in this country," Wilhelm said. "Which is out in the 50 states."

He said he doesn't expect delegates to agree to effective changes in the AFL-CIO's structure and operations at the AFL-CIO's convention in Chicago,

The convention starts Monday.

Wilhelm said he isn't considering a run for president of the AFL-CIO against incumbent Sweeney at the convention, because the unions in the federation that represent a majority of union workers don't support the kinds of changes he thinks will be effective in strengthening the labor movement.


"I have always said the question of reform comes first and the question of leadership comes second," Wilhelm said. "If unions representing a majority of union members favored reform then I would run, but that's not the case. Unions that represent 60 percent of union members believe there is no need for change."

Wilhelm said he doesn't expect the AFL-CIO leadership
to agree to changes that will be effective enough to strengthen the labor movement.

"Unions representing a majority of AFL-CIO union members have made clear they support the status quo in the AFL-CIO," Wilhelm said. "I don't expect any change at the AFL-CIO convention."

Wilhelm led the Culinary Union's negotiations with Las Vegas casinos during the 1980s and '90s. He now represents one of six unions that have formed a coalition of unions that have sought organizational changes within the AFL-CIO. That group includes UNITE HERE, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the Service Employees International Union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Laborers' International Union of North America and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.


The dissident unions say they are seeking more of an investment in organizing and more of a bipartisan approach to politics, in the wake of declining union membership. That approach seeks to align the union with politicians who are worker-friendly regardless of their political party affiliation.

Although the Change to Win Coalition doesn't represent a majority of the union members in the AFL-CIO, Wilhelm said the group's six unions represent about 6 million union members -- or about 40 percent of the total number of unionized workers in the country. He said the coalition plans to meet at its founding convention in the fall, with a place and specific time yet to be determined
.

"We have a very strong group of unions," Wilhelm said. "We're going to set up a permanent organization. We're going to welcome unions that stay in the AFL-CIO or unions that leave the AFL-CIO."

He said if effective changes aren't devised at the AFL-CIO convention his union won't continue to fight other unions that agree with the AFL-CIO's leadership. UNITE HERE hasn't made any moves to withdraw from the AFL-CIO -- but he said it's an option.


"We're not going to engage in a prolonged fight with other unions," Wilhelm said. "If some unions believe that the status quo is acceptable they should go their own way. We're going to establish an alternative organization. Whether or not we stay within the AFL-CIO, we're going to do the things we think need to be done to improve things for American workers."

Wilhelm also said the reason he resigned his post as chair of the AFL-CIO Immigration Committee earlier this week is because the AFL-CIO, led by Sweeney, has taken over the committee. He said the committee hasn't met, but that the AFL-CIO and its staff have gone ahead and made policies without consulting the committee.

Wilhelm said the AFL-CIO's member unions had previously been able to come to an agreement that immigrant workers are important to the nation's economy and that the fate of immigrant workers is tied into the fate of all workers. He said because the Immigration Committee has had no input in the AFL-CIO's immigration policies that the unions no longer have a consensus on the issue of immigration.

"I think it's because the AFL-CIO has become a beltway bureaucracy that is disconnected from the realities that go on in Nevada and California and New York and the rest of the world," Wilhelm said. "Avoiding the bureaucratic approach was the reason why it (the Immigration Committee) was successful."

But Sweeney said in a letter addressed to Wilhelm that the UNITE HERE official is misrepresenting the work of the committee. Sweeney said UNITE HERE's positions on immigration -- including its support for a guest-worker program -- made the work of supporting immigration efforts more difficult. He also noted that UNITE HERE has dissented from most unions on immigration legislation proposed by U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.


"Two of the most active and vocal unions on the Immigration Committee LIUNA (Laborers) and UFCW, strongly disagreed with the UNITE HERE position of abandoning prevailing wage standards and allowing for a significantly expanded temporary worker program without effective labor protections," Sweeney wrote. "The Teamsters also objected to the UNITE HERE-backed construct of a guest worker program."

Sweeney said only at Kennedy's request did he step in to ensure discussions on that topic continued.

Wilhelm denied that disputes over specific immigration issues led him to quit the committee.

"The AFL-CIO's bureaucracy has taken over the committee and rendered it irrelevant," Wilhelm said. "It's symptomatic of what's wrong with the AFL-CIO."

He acknowledged that immigration issues are complicated and controversial and that the unions did disagree on specific issues, but said he welcomes differing opinions.

Wilhelm said that the way unions operate in Las Vegas is the way the rest of the labor movement should operate. Unions in Las Vegas, particularly the Culinary Union, have been successful at organizing because they work well with companies that are willing to cooperate with them and fight those companies that won't.


The Teamsters Union's general executive board made a move to distance itself from the AFL-CIO Wednesday. The group gave its President James Hoffa, the ability to withdraw from the umbrella organization if he chooses to do so. The Teamsters general executive board also gave the official go-ahead to affiliate with the Change to Win Coalition.

__________________________________

Folks, when the economic crash came in 2008 and banks and investment firms were heading toward bankruptcy no one supported the bank bailout.  You can bet that this financial branch of the AFL-CIO wanted very much to see that bailout because it profits just as Wall Street does.  When you have unions as banks and investment firms they have incentives to seek low wages to maximize corporate profits in which they have investments.  Look at this public private investment in cities where the City Government partners with a hotel and then the hotel abuses its labor to maximize profits----the City is profiting off of labor abuse.  The same thing happens when unions are investment firms.  Their loyalties tilt towards profit.

That is why we see national union leaders backing these neo-liberals leading us to global corporate rule.  PLEASE MAKE UNIONS STRONG WITH LEADERSHIP THAT SUPPORTS LABOR!


About Us
Who We Are  |  Membership Eligibilty  |  How to Join

Who We Are

The mission of the AFL-CIO Employees Federal Credit Union is to be the primary financial institution for union families, providing quality products and member service, consistent with the values of the labor movement.

As a credit union, we exist solely to serve the financial needs of our membership. Those services include not simply loans and savings and checking accounts, but all sorts of ways to make it easier to manage the money in one’s accounts. They also include educational services like the free Balance Financial Fitness Program.

Our credit union is run democratically. The members elect a board of directors in annual elections. Our day-to-day operations are carried out by a professional staff whose members always treat you as more than just a customer. After all, when you belong to AFL-CIO Employees Federal Credit Union, you’re one of the owners.


Membership Eligibility

You are in the field of membership of the AFL-CIO Employees Federal Credit Union and are eligible to join and participate fully in our credit union if you are employed by:

  • The AFL-CIO
  • An affiliated AFL-CIO International Union 
  • A constitutional department of the AFL-CIO
  • A state or local central labor body
or if you are a member of:

  • Office and Professional Employees International Union--Local 2
  • United Food and Commercial Workers Union--Local 400
  • National Football League Players Association
  • International Union of Painters Allied Trades, District Council 51
or if you're retired from any eligible field of membership.

If you’re a member, all your immediate family members are also eligible to join, no matter where they live. Immediate family members include: your spouse, children, siblings, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, stepparents, stepchildren, stepsiblings, and adoptive relationships.

Once you join the AFL-CIO Employees Federal Credit Union, you’re a member for life.  Even if you change jobs, move, or retire, you can still continue to enjoy the many benefits of Credit Union membership.


How to Join

Opening a Regular Share Savings account with as little as $5 will establish your lifetime membership in the credit union.  It’s easy to become a member. There are just three simple steps:

  1. Apply. Fill out a membership application. Bring or mail it to one of our branches.
  2. Deposit. Write a check (payable to AFL-CIO Employees Federal Credit Union) or provide cash for your initial deposit of $5. Please do not send cash by mail.
Show ID. Bring in valid government-issued photo identification.  If mailing, please provide a legible copy of your ID.
___________________________________________

This group is simply a Wall Street investment firm that pretends to invest in union or labor related business but as everyone knows THESE GROUPS DO WHATEVER MAKES THE MOST MONEY.  It's like these green businesses that get tax breaks but do nothing that is green.  Whenever an organization becomes so entrenched in corporate culture as this-----it no longer works for labor.  The NAACP has done the same thing and you hear no voice from either labor or justice on all these neo-liberal policies that are killing us.

THIS IS WHY WE DO NOT HAVE LABOR LEADERS EDUCATING PEOPLE AS TO WHY NEO-LIBERALS AND THEIR POLICIES ARE BAD.  THEY ARE COMING OUT AFTER THESE POLICIES ARE PASSED TO CONDEMN THEM.


Union members must know that Clinton created the downfall for unions with NAFTA and deregulation.....you do not want leaders that are still supporting these guys.
  This is why unions have such low support in mainstream labor.


The AFL-CIO Investment Trust Corporation (ITC) is an institutional investor relations firm that provides non-fiduciary marketing services to investment funds seeking to grow within the multi-employer and public fund markets. Since 1999, ITC has leveraged its extensive knowledge of both the labor movement and the pension community to raise $4.1 billion in capital for labor-related investment vehicles. Investment funds served by the ITC have 188 pension plan investors and $4.1 billion in total assets.

The ITC is part of the AFL-CIO Investment Program, a framework that also includes three large pooled investment funds: the AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust, a commercial real estate fund; the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, a fixed-income investment company; and the AFL-CIO Equity Index Fund, a S&P 500 Index Fund.

AFL-CIO Building Investment Trust



______________________________________

GET RID OF TRUMKA AND DONAHUE!  WE NEED LABOR LEADERS WORKING FOR LABOR!

If you look below you will see two major labor leaders in a statement that says just what neo-liberals are pushing right now.  Keep in mind that most Post Office employees hate Donahue so Trumka is not in good company.  The first statement I highlight is the career college and job training tracking that I constantly speak against. It does not help union membership to have no pathway for their children out of vocational education and that is what corporate education policy is doing and indeed-----unions are pushing this career college movement of taxpayer money and away from academic track funding.  We can and should have a strong vocational track and we do not need to dismantle the academic track to do this---it is not either/or.  The policy is killing public education.

The next statement has Trumka saying-----even with high unemployment bring in the immigrant labor.  This is of what I spoke yesterday.  There will be no modest increase----it will be huge and displace large sectors of US labor and Trumka knows this.  Trumka backs this because global corporations threw a bone that says for now-----unions can organize immigrants.  Driving US labor to third world level does not balance organizing immigrants.  That is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

'Our challenge is building an economy that responds to the market-based needs of business'.....
THAT IS WALL STREET SPEAK FOLKS.  I'm hearing union leaders speaking all the time lately about market-based needs of business.  This means maximized profits and it means 'at the expense of labor and justice'.  Congress moving from social to market-based Cost Analysis is what killed the middle-class and is dismantling our social safety nets.

'Building a system that is more transparent' means HANDING ALL PERSONAL DATA TO CORPORATIONS SO THEY CAN MAXIMIZE PROFITS.    Trumka is embracing the open-door policies of handing all public data to corporations under the guise of FIXING THE SYSTEM.



Joint Statement of Shared Principles by U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue & AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka



February 21, 2013 The United States will always be a nation of immigrants who have contributed greatly to the vitality, diversity, and creativity of American life.  Yet, like the rest of America’s immigration system, the mechanisms for evaluating our labor market needs and admitting foreign workers – as well as recruiting US workers – for temporary and permanent jobs are broken or non-existent.  Current immigration policies are rigid, cumbersome and inefficient.   What is needed is the creation of a professional bureau in a federal executive agency to inform Congress and the public about these issues together with a system that  provides for lesser-skilled visas that respond to employers’ needs while protecting the wages and working conditions of lesser-skilled workers – foreign or domestic.  Current efforts at comprehensive immigration reform present a unique and historic opportunity for American workers a
nd businesses to work together to fix this aspect of the badly broken system.

Over the last months, representatives of business and labor have been engaged in serious discussions about how to fix the system in a way that benefits both workers and employers, with a focus on lesser-skilled occupations.  We have found common ground in several important areas, and have committed to continue to work together and with Members of Congress to enact legislation that will solve our current problems in a lasting manner.

Specifically, we agree that the following principles should guide legislation in the complicated and important area of addressing lesser-skilled immigration to our country:

First, American workers should have a first crack at available jobs.  To that end, business and labor are committed to improving the way that information about job openings in lesser-skilled occupations reaches the maximum number of workers, particularly those in disadvantaged communities.

Second, there are instances – even during tough economic times – when employers are not able to fill job openings with American workers.  Those instances will surely increase as the economy improves, and when they occur, it is important that our laws permit businesses to hire foreign workers without having to go through a cumbersome and inefficient process.  Our challenge is to create a mechanism that responds to the needs of business in a market-driven way, while also fully protecting the wages and working conditions of U.S. and immigrant workers. Among other things, this requires a new kind of worker visa program that does not keep all workers in a permanent temporary status, provides labor mobility in a way that still gives American workers a first shot at available jobs, and that automatically adjusts as the American economy expands and contracts.

Third, we need to fix the system so that it is much more transparent, which requires that we build a base of knowledge using real-world data about labor markets and demographics.  The power of today’s technology enables us to use that knowledge to craft a workable demand-driven process fed by data that will inform how America addresses future labor shortages.  We recognize that there is no simple solution to this issue.  We agree that a professional bureau in a federal executive agency, with political independence analogous to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, should be established to inform Congress and the public about these issues.            

We are now in the middle – not the end – of this process, and we pledge to continue to work together and with our allies and our representatives on Capitol Hill to finalize a solution that is in the interest of this country we all love.

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September 25th, 2014

9/25/2014

0 Comments

 
I SHOWED YESTERDAY THAT AMERICAN RNs ARE BEING FORCED TO LEAVE BY ADVERSE WORKING CONDITIONS JUST AS ARE TEACHERS NOW.  BELOW YOU SEE WHY-----TAKING LABOR AS CHEAP AS IT WILL GO.

NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS---WHY ARE YOUR NATIONAL LABOR LEADERS SUPPORTING THEM?



I want to look locally but what I am sharing is happening all over the US.  Again, this is not anti-immigrant -----we love and protect immigrant rights----it shows how US neo-liberal/neo-con global policies are bad for everyone.  Foreign workers do not want to leave their homes to come to the US for the most part.  They want work at home.  They are often lied to as to what their lives will be once they come to work in the US under the guise of 'shortages in skilled workers'.  So, this exposes bad policy for US workers and those immigrant workers being brought to the US.  Time after time I hear these immigrant workers say they want to simply go back home because what was offered looks nothing like they were promised.  Indeed, the only purpose of these international staffing schemes is to bring labor to the US to be exploited as cheap labor.  With unemployment at 36% in the US and large percentages with professional degrees now taking poverty jobs we all know the shortage of workers in the US is tied to yesterday's blog----burn out from bad work conditions----global corporates want US workers to quit.


Below you see the US corporation whose operations identify, train, and bring back immigrant labor to the US all while pretending they are in that nation training people to serve in their own countries.  JHPIEGO is Johns Hopkins International and they are given hundreds of miillions of dollars in Federal funding to go overseas and train people to work as health care workers and teachers.  Now, if you notice Baltimore and Maryland has super-sized its immigrant labor in health care and teaching......and many work with any number of Johns Hopkins health care corporations.  As the article below states there is very little accountability in this program and there is no documentation of JHPIEGO's accomplishments for the overseas communities---the article says not many people seem involved.  Well, I'm here today using deductive reasoning to say that this operation is more about identifying, training, and bringing immigrants back to the US to be exploited.

A few years ago national newspapers had articles of nations around the world decrying the US taking these citizens to the US when they are needed at home.  The problem----there is no money in those nations to hire these people trained.  So, it is all a scam.


Again, we are not against immigrants coming to the US.  We are against how it is being done and the goal behind it.  A time of great economic distress and unemployment in the US is not a time for a flood of immigrants. The article from the White House below says that America was built on immigrant labor.  Well, that was when America was empty of people and Westward expansion created genocide for indigent people. 

IT WAS BAD THEN AND IT IS EXTREMELY BAD NOW.


Who is supporting this Senate Immigration Reform knowing all of this is the goal?  National Labor Union leaders, justice organizations like NAACP, and neo-liberal and neo-con pols.  As I shared yesterday, most Hispanic leaders know this IMMIGRATION POLICY IS bad news.



'Yet the tallies of people involved in JHPIEGO's endeavors are sometimes relatively small for PEPFAR, which measures success by the numbers.

In at least one case, Dowding said he felt that reported numbers didn't accurately reflect the quality of JHPIEGO's program'.



Jhpiego was actively working in the following African countries:

Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe[3]


Asia, Near East and Europe Latin America and the Caribbean


I am not saying that this organization is not helping communities overseas----I am saying that it is bringing back immigrant labor from these countries trained to work in health care and teaching etc.



JHPIEGO This Johns Hopkins-affiliated nonprofit trains health care providers to give care abroad



By Devin Varsalona 12:00 am, December 13, 2006 Updated: 12:19 pm, May 19, 2014 CommentE-mailPrintJHPIEGO (its name is not an acronym), a nonprofit health organization affiliated with The Johns Hopkins University, works worldwide to "train trainers" — whether they are hospital employees or African village laymen.

JHPIEGO draws on resources from Johns Hopkins' schools of Public Health, Medicine and Nursing, but doesn't offer medical treatment or family services. The organization trains people overseas to do that instead, and mainly uses local medical practitioners and trainers to run its programs.

"Our focus is on establishing the system," said Sam Dowding, acting director of JHPIEGO's Center of Excellence on HIV/AIDS. "We work in institutions where we train the trainers, so in 5 years, 10 years, it continues to be self-sustained."

The organization's funding largely comes from the federal government, which has backed the organization since its first day in operation.

In 2005, the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a five-year, $15 billion initiative to fight AIDS abroad, granted the organization $8.2 million for its efforts in Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. The funding accounted for more than a fifth of JHPIEGO's $37.5 million program expenditures and built on its work in more than 90 countries worldwide.

But at least one of JHPIEGO's programs has been debated in international circles and was not supported by PEPFAR.

Working history with U.S. government

For more than 30 years, JHPIEGO has been working with the U.S. Agency for International Development to improve health care services for women and families in developing countries.

It was founded in 1973 to implement a five-year USAID grant to train obstetricians and gynecologists. After the grant's extension, JHPIEGO expanded its global presence through partnerships with USAID, then with private foundations and other international health organizations.

About 25 years after its inception, JHPIEGO made its first inroads into HIV/AIDS relief as part of a consortium of organizations working in West Africa. By 2002, it had entered a five-year partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called the University Technical Assistance Project.

The project, now fully funded by PEPFAR, includes nine other U.S. research universities and provides the CDC with country-specific assistance for HIV/AIDS relief programs. Infection prevention, antiretroviral treatment, counseling and testing services are among the needs addressed through the program.

Through their partnership, the CDC funds 70 percent of expenditures for JHPIEGO's Center of Excellence on HIV/AIDS, established in 2004. That commitment was worth more than $10 million in fiscal 2005 across several countries, including the six of PEPFAR's 15 focus countries in which JHPIEGO operates.

PEPFAR programs

According to Dowding, JHPIEGO implements a step-by-step learning method in its field training programs.

Local health care providers become "qualified clinical trainers" upon completing one or two courses and after conducting their own sessions under review. Through additional coursework, they move on to "advanced trainer," and then may be selected to complete coursework for "master trainer" status. At the peak levels, they help instruct those under them.

While much of its work is carried out through established institutions, such as hospitals, health centers and ministries of health, the organization also has addressed culturally specific needs. In Mozambique, for example, JHPIEGO was awarded PEPFAR funds in 2005 to provide training for a community-based method of HIV testing.

"The Mozambique government recently agreed to an initiative to try to come up with a way of testing every person in the country," Dowding said. "They asked us how we'd do it. We said we'd train lay counselors to go from home to home instead of relying on individuals to come into health centers."

Federal documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity through a Freedom of Information Act request show that JHPIEGO has worked largely in institutional settings. It has implemented programs in Zambian military hospitals to prevent mother-to-child disease transmission, educated injection and bio-safety trainers in Mozambique and has worked closely with various Ministries of Health to develop training guidelines, like Ethiopia's National Infection Prevention Guidelines.
 

Yet the tallies of people involved in JHPIEGO's endeavors are sometimes relatively small for PEPFAR, which measures success by the numbers.

In his 2003 State of the Union address in which he introduced PEPFAR, President George W. Bush called it a "work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa" that would prevent seven million new infections, treat at least 2 million infected individuals and provide care for millions of people affected by HIV/AIDS.

Since then, those target numbers have been calculated through the combined efforts implemented by all contractors, including JHPIEGO. Although JHPIEGO and USAID collaborate on their goals, Dowding shared concern with other organizations over a pressure to produce numbers.

"We've had to change training methodology considerably," Dowding said, referring to a program in South Africa. "We're not one to do training programs with 60 people in a room over two days of lectures. That's not what JHPIEGO prefers, but that's how we have to [work] because of the challenges and resources available."

In at least one case, Dowding said he felt that reported numbers didn't accurately reflect the quality of JHPIEGO's program.

In 2005, JHPIEGO and Family Health International — which Dowding called a "major competitor" — both worked on an effort to train HIV counselors and testers in Ethiopia. While JHPIEGO trained 181 individuals in military and civilian hospitals, FHI educated 1,170 people in health centers and communities.

"We report on the numbers of hospitals [in Ethiopia], which doesn't really reflect our work," Dowding said. "You're not going to be satisfied in doing it in a fairly shallow way; we want to make sure we're doing a quality job."

Debate over male circumcision

Another issue JHPIEGO has raised with PEPFAR remains controversial in international health circles.

In the late 1980s, researchers in Africa began to notice that HIV infection rates were much higher in areas where male circumcisions were not performed due to tribal or regional culture, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report on the practice. Circumcision removes the foreskin, which is filled with white blood cells that AIDS researchers say allow HIV additional access to the bloodstream.

JHPIEGO has had success with a program advocating male circumcision in Zambia under separate USAID funding. It has tried pushing for PEPFAR to support a similar initiative, but to no avail. "We continue to try to get policymakers to see that HIV relief … [involves] a wide range of issues," Dowding said.

Along with JHPIEGO, other international health organizations have issued a call to make inexpensive male circumcisions safe and widely available, saying that doing so would help the infection rate to fall. At the 2006 International AIDS Conference, former President Bill Clinton suggested that he would endorse the practice if studies prove it to be effective.

Yet at the same conference, where JHPIEGO presented its results from Zambia, others pointed out religious and cultural stigmas against male circumcision, as well as noting that there could be a backlash.

The Canadian Press reported that Catherine Hankins, chief scientific adviser for the United Nations AIDS program, noted there that circumcised men are looked down upon in some African cultures. Other men might think that circumcision would take the place of wearing a condom, others argued.

PEPFAR hasn't yet included the practice in its prevention strategy, but it may be moving towards funding the practice. Its second annual report to Congress, released in February 2006, mentions the convening of a Scientific Advisory Board to review data and draft recommendations about male circumcision. The report also says that 2006 funding in Kenya has been appropriated to explore the acceptability and feasibility of male circumcision in the future
.


____________________________________________



Imported Care: Recruiting Foreign Nurses To U.S. Health Care Facilities
  1. Barbara L. Brush,
  2. Julie Sochalski and
  3. Anne M. Berger
  Abstract As U.S. health care facilities struggle to fill current registered nurse staffing vacancies, a more critical nurse undersupply is predicted over the next twenty years. In response, many institutions are doubling their efforts to attract and retain nurses. To that end, foreign nurses are increasingly being sought, creating a lucrative business for new recruiting agencies both at home and abroad. This paper examines past and current foreign nurse use as a response to nurse shortages and its implications for domestic and global nurse workforce policies.

Importing nurses is likely to remain a viable and lucrative strategy for plugging holes in the U.S. nurse workforce.

Within the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the U.S. population is projected to grow at least 18 percent, and the population age sixty-five and older will increase at three times that rate. Meeting the demand for registered nurses (RNs) that an aging population will require will be a challenge. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimated that the United States was weathering a shortfall of 111,000 full-time-equivalent (FTE) RNs in 2000 and projected that this figure will grow to 275,000 by 2010.2 That imbalance will nearly triple in the subsequent decade, reaching a shortfall of 800,000 FTE RNs by 2020.

This looming crisis has spurred public- and private-sector health care leaders to advocate for serious and creative solutions to bolster RN supply. U.S. health care facilities, which confront the nursing shortage twenty-four hours a day, are adopting a host of strategies to attract nurses to fill current nursing vacancies and to stave off future shortfalls. Among these strategies is the recruitment and employment of foreign nurses. This is not a new phenomenon; U.S. health care institutions have done it for more than fifty years. What differs today, however, is the marked expansion of organized international nurse recruitment; the growth of private, for-profit agencies to do this work; and an increasing number of countries sending nurses abroad. Many of these countries are poorly positioned to surrender large numbers of qualified nursing staff.  The consequences for these sending countries have become the focal point of growing international debate that is rising to the highest policy-making levels, although with little resolution. Overshadowed by that debate, the consequences for nurse migrants and their workplaces, for quality of care and patient outcomes, and for workforce planning efforts have received little attention. Meanwhile, the United States, while not the world’s largest recruiter of foreign nurses, is recruiting greater numbers than it ever did in the past and is poised to greatly increase those efforts.

We argue that the demand-driven U.S. nurse shortage represents a strong migratory “pull” factor for nurses throughout the world, which has stimulated the growth of for-profit organizations to serve as brokers to ease the way for nurses to emigrate. This is occurring, however, in the absence of a careful examination of the implications for nurse recruits and the impact on the health care delivery systems that both send and receive them.

The Foreign Nurse Pool: Then And Now During the past fifty years the United States has regularly imported nurses to ease its nurse shortages. Although the proportion of foreign nurses has never exceeded 5 percent of the U.S. nurse workforce, that figure is now slowly rising.

The Philippines has dominated the nurse migration pipeline to the United States and to other recruiting countries.  Indeed, until the mid-1980s Filipino nurses represented 75 percent of all foreign nurses in the U.S. nurse workforce. Their representation dropped to 43 percent by 2000 as more countries began sending nurses abroad.

After slowing in the second half of the 1990s, nurse migration to the United States increased, with the Philippines still leading the way for an even larger group of countries. In 1995 nearly 10,000 foreign nurses received their U.S. RN licenses, representing almost 10 percent of all newly licensed RNs in that year. By 1998 that proportion fell by nearly half, as the number of new foreign nurses entering the U.S. workforce fell more steeply than the number of new U.S. RNs (Exhibit 1⇓). After 1998 the foreign nurse proportion steadily grew, topping 14 percent in 2003. The growth since 2001 is particularly noteworthy because it occurred as the number of U.S.-trained RNs rose, reversing declines since 1995.

EXHIBIT 1 Percentage Of Newly Licensed Registered Nurses (RNs) In The United States Who Are Foreign Educated, 1995–2003

Filipino nurses represented more than half of the foreign graduates taking the U.S. licensure exam in 2001 (Exhibit 2⇓). Together, nurses from Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Korea, and Nigeria contributed about half that rate. The remainder were from thirty-five countries that were not found among the 1997 cohort.

EXHIBIT 2 Percentage Of First-Time, Foreign-Trained Registered Nurse (RN) Candidates For U.S. Licensure Examination, By Top Six Exporting Countries, 1997–2001

Upon coming to the United States, foreign nurses are employed in an increasingly diverse array of settings (Exhibit 3⇓). Like their U.S. counterparts, the percentage of foreign nurses working in hospitals has steadily declined over the past decade, from 79.9 percent to 71.5 percent, as organizational and financing reforms have encouraged movement of patient care out of hospitals. At the same time, their numbers in public/community health and ambulatory settings have grown, also mirroring those of U.S.-trained nurses. Unlike domestic nurses, however, foreign nurse representation in nursing homes has risen from 7.4 percent to 9.3 percent.14

EXHIBIT 3 Distribution Of U.S.-Trained And Foreign-Trained Nurses, By Setting, 1992 And 2000

The Impact Of Migration:

Home And Abroad Nurses are enticed to leave their home countries by promises of better pay and working conditions; improved learning and practice opportunities; and free travel, licensure, and room and board. Primarily female, nurses often have opportunities for wages unequaled in their own countries and thus become the means for substantial remittances. In 2004 the U.S. Department of Labor reported median annual earnings for RNs in 2002 as $48,090; in hospitals and nursing homes where foreign nurses worked, earnings averaged $49,190 and $43,850, respectively. These figures contrast sharply with the $2,000–$2,400 annual salaries paid to nurses in the Philippines in 2002.

Shifting the nurse supply.

As the United States and other developed countries look to international nurse recruits to balance their national nurse supply and demand, however, sending countries are increasingly questioning the impact on their own health care systems. In perhaps the most striking example, the Wall Street Journal noted that the growing number of Filipino nurses migrating abroad is creating a domestic shortage and beginning to strain the Philippines’ health care system rather than providing an economic benefit as it had in previous years. A growing number of other countries are facing a situation similar to that of the Philippines. New offshore recruiting initiatives by developed countries have targeted English-speaking nurses from sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. Experienced nurses, especially those with specialty skills in surgical, neonatal, or critical care nursing, are in particularly high demand.

While the United States has only recently begun active nurse recruitment in South Africa, former Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia have already drawn large numbers of nurses from this area of the world. Between 1998 and 2002 the United Kingdom alone recruited 5,259 nurses from South Africa, along with 1,166 from Nigeria, 1,128 from Zimbabwe, and 449 from Ghana. The accelerated recruitment of experienced African nurses is straining an already fragile health care infrastructure in many African countries, which have been battered by AIDS and deprived of resources because of economic and political upheaval. Sixteen African countries have an average of 100 nurses per 100,000 population; ten countries average fifty nurses per 100,000; nine report twenty per 100,000; and three have fewer than ten nurses per 100,000. In stark contrast, U.S. and U.K. ratios are 782 and 847 per 100,000, respectively. In 2000 more than double the number of new nursing graduates in Ghana left that country for positions abroad. In response, the Ghanaian government is now begging recruiting nations to cease taking its nurses.

Economic burden.

The loss of qualified nurses places considerable economic pressure on exporting African countries. In 1998 the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development estimated that every professional, ages 25–35, who migrated from South Africa represented an annual loss of $184,000 for that country. Receiving countries obtain the financial benefit of the migrant’s professional education and training, while sending countries bear these costs. The loss of valuable workers has been so costly that the South African Nursing Council has proposed an export tariff on nurses leaving to work abroad.

Nurses’ Technical And Cultural Competence A key concern related to foreign nurses is whether they provide high-quality services to U.S. patients. Rosemary Stevens has argued that when discussing quality in an international context, one must distinguish between people’s ability to perform specific tasks and their ability to communicate effectively with patients and other professionals to provide culturally appropriate care.

The Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) was established in 1977 to ensure foreign nurses’ technical and cultural competence prior to employment in U.S. health care institutions. Modeled after the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG), CGFNS verifies foreign nurses’ credentials and educational qualifications and identifies those at risk for failing the U.S. nurse licensure exam (NCLEX-RN) prior to immigration. A qualifying examination that assesses nursing proficiency and English language comprehension earns nurses a CGFNS certificate and eligibility for nonimmigrant occupational preference visas.

Foreign nurses must supply evidence that they completed prescribed amounts of didactic and clinical instruction as “first-level nurses.” Defined by the International Council of Nurses (ICN), this is a measure of technical competence regardless of national background. The final step in the process is passing the NCLEX-RN. Passing nurse licensing and English proficiency tests remains the marker for establishing competence among foreign nurses. No studies to date have determined whether foreign nurses’ cultural orientation and technical competence produce differences in patient outcomes when compared with their domestic counterparts.

Crisis And Opportunity

In April 2002 the Workforce Commission for Hospitals and Health Systems, convened by the American Hospital Association (AHA), issued its recommendations to health care leaders for confronting the current nurse shortage and averting the predicted shortfall. Flexible staffing options and improved working conditions, methods to simplify work and improve nurses’ quality of life, and fostering more meaningful work were prominent among the strategies offered. The AHA has also advocated for federal legislative initiatives that are targeted at building and maintaining the U.S. nursing workforce.

These responses have yet to dampen the strong demand for foreign nurse labor. Hospitals and nursing homes are independently recruiting nurses overseas as well as hiring recruitment agencies to secure nurses on their behalf. Because of the profitability of this latter strategy, new recruitment agencies are cropping up both within the United States and in other recruiting countries. Many U.S.-based agencies also have offices in sending countries to facilitate the process.

The agencies.

In recent years recruitment agencies have been placing foreign nurses in larger numbers in states that attracted both large and small numbers of nurses in the past. In 1992 California and New York were home to nearly half of all foreign nurses in the United States. By 2000 their shares of foreign nurses had declined to 38 percent, while the combined shares of the next most frequent locations—Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and Texas—rose to equal them. More than half of the remaining states saw increases in their shares of foreign nurses.

Venkat Neni’s Global Healthcare Recruiters provides a good example of the marketing allure of foreign nurses in states that previously did not typically recruit or employ international nurses. A physician in India before immigrating to the United States, Neni founded his Wisconsin-based agency in 2002. In less than a year he successfully supplied 145 nurses from India to Milwaukee’s Columbia St. Mary’s and Oshkosh’s Mercy Medical Center. In November 2002 he and executives from Covenant Healthcare System in Milwaukee traveled to India and hired another 100 nurses. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Neni shared his goal to recruit an additional 500 nurses to Wisconsin by 2004, estimating profits to exceed $5 million. Neni’s earnings pale in comparison with those of more established firms.

On average, hospitals pay recruiting agencies $5,000–$10,000 per nurse. In return, nurses contract to work from two to three years in the hiring institution. In the Covenant Healthcare System example, Global Healthcare agreed to fully refund the recruiting fee to the hospital if a nurse recruit failed to continue working past three months. The hospital was partially repaid if nurses fell short of their three-year commitment.

The hiring facilities.

Although hospitals agree that the initial cost of recruiting foreign nurses is higher than that of hiring domestic nurses, many feel that they save money in the long run because of reduced turnover and the agency’s assurance of full or partial remuneration if recruited nurses fail their contractual obligations. Recruiting abroad may also be less costly than raising salaries, increasing benefits, and providing other economic incentives needed to retain domestic nurses. Under the terms and conditions of hiring foreign nurses from recruiting agencies, therefore, hospitals enter into a relatively risk-free arrangement that provides further incentive for procuring staff abroad. Strategies for such recruitment at one facility are described in a 2003 AHA report on workplace innovations.

The advantages of recruiting foreign nurses have had particular appeal for long-term care facilities. Since 1989 nursing homes have secured foreign nurses through an “attestation” process stipulated in the Immigration Nursing Relief Act (INRA). In recent years recruitment agencies have capitalized on the crisis in long-term care staffing, partnering with nursing home operators to provide nurses from several countries. Long-term care institutions will likely continue to look abroad to fill nearly 14,000 staff RN and 25,100 licensed practical nurse (LPN) vacancies.

  Implications For The Future

The current U.S. nurse shortage and the profitability in recruiting foreign nurses to fill nurse vacancies will undoubtedly increase the interest in, and pressure for, additional means to increase foreign nurse recruitment. Changes in immigration policy, recruitment practices, and licensure requirements will also permit a greater flow of foreign nurses to U.S. health care facilities. For example, the cost of immigration, initially shouldered by migrating nurses, is now transferred to the facilities themselves. The NCLEX-RN examination is being offered overseas, beginning in 2004, in an effort to facilitate the licensure process. Recruitment agencies are now routinely based in the Philippines, India, and other key locations to aid nurses’ access to information, English language classes, and exam preparation courses. Newer recruitment strategies now offer U.S.-based master’s-level education to foreign nurses as a further incentive for migration. A recent San Francisco Chronicle article reported that as many as 3,000 physicians in the Philippines had begun training to become nurses for export to the United States because of the much higher salaries they could earn.

Although foreign-trained nurses now account for around 5 percent of the total U.S. nursing workforce, they represent a growing percentage of newly licensed nurses. Moreover, growth in the domestic production of nurses since 2002 did not diminish interest in foreign recruitment among employers. Indeed, Peter Buerhaus and his colleagues note sizable growth in the number of foreign-born nurses in the United States during this period. And while interest in foreign nurses accelerates during nurse shortages, it also appears to endure beyond shortage cycles. In 1988, during the last major U.S. nurse shortage, there were 3.7 foreign-trained nurses in the United States per 100 U.S.-trained nurses. In 1996, a time of record domestic nurse production and a slowdown in hospitals’ demand for nurses because of industrywide workforce restructuring, the ratio rose to 5.1. Consequently, if nurse vacancies continue in health care facilities, and domestic production falls short of the demand, then foreign nurses are likely to remain a viable and increasingly lucrative strategy for plugging holes in the U.S. nurse workforce.

Ethics of recruiting.

Increased international recruitment requires that several policy issues be explicitly addressed. The international debate over the responsibilities of recruiting nations toward countries whose nurses are being recruited, many of which are developing countries, has produced a range of proposals—from ethical recruitment guidelines and codes of practice to financial compensation for sending countries. The British National Health Service and the ICN, for example, have both issued ethical guidelines for foreign nurse recruitment. Others have voiced concern about the long-term viability and ethics of foreign nurse recruitment in the face of a global nurse shortage.

To date, the ethical guidelines have had only a modest short-term impact on recruiting practices, and the compensation proposals continue to be debated without resolution. If the United States maintains its role as a major nurse recruiter, then it should join this international dialogue. This dialogue should not be focused solely on recruitment practices but should place equal emphasis on strategies to reform work environments to improve nurse retention and reduce avoidable demand.

Quality issues.

Little is known about whether the quality of nursing care differs between foreign- and U.S.-trained nurses. While the certification process assures competency in educational training and language, differential quality of clinical care has not been assessed. Quality of care could be affected by, among other things, poor orientation and training of new foreign nurses who are assimilating into the U.S. health care system. The development and evaluation of more comprehensive orientation and training activities are warranted and have been recommended by the AHA. An assessment of the quality of care and patient outcomes is likewise needed and should include an appraisal of the cultural competence foreign nurses bring to patient care.

Workforce strategy issues.

Finally, U.S. workforce planning efforts require the development of systems that monitor the inflow of foreign nurses, their countries of origin, the settings where they work, and their impact on the nurse shortage. Increasing demand for foreign nurses in the face of greater domestic production is a signal that domestic efforts are insufficient to keep up with demand. A broader-based workforce strategy that balances foreign nurse recruitment, domestic production, and concerted retention efforts is needed to ensure that the nursing care needs of the public will be met.

___________________________________________

What has existed overseas is what neo-liberals and neo-cons are now trying to do in the US.  The people who get into the best universities in China or  India are the children from wealthy families and these are the graduates coming to the US.  They are successful enterpreneurs in the US because they made money often by the same techniques that US corporations are using today-----fleecing and winning at any cost. 

THIS IS A GENERALIZATION AND DOES NOT MEAN ALL IMMIGRANTS COMING WITH THIS 'EXECUTIVE ORDER' WILL BRING MORE OF WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO BE RID.  IT MEANS THAT THIS POLICY SETS INTO MOTION THE PROCESS OF TOP BUSINESS LEADERSHIP COMING FROM THE RICH ONLY.

  • What makes this policy bad is that at the same time the American people are seeing all their pathways to  higher education closing and tracking to career colleges and lost financial aid to strong 4 year universities all means 90% of Americans will not access the education, the funding, and opportunities to climb the economic ladder.

    I spoke of how Ivy League universities getting hundreds of billions of dollars in research building funds are now operating pipelines for students attending these universities into these global corporate jobs, totally by-passing
    the general population.  The world's top talent taken from their own country leaves that country without benefit of those people.  It will create competition and stresses between nations that are not needed.


    So, the Wall Street operation that makes the 1% richer is now extending to who gets the jobs in the US.

  • Taking Action to Attract the World’s Top Talented Professionals
    Secretary Penny PritzkerMay 06, 2014
    11:44 AM EDT

    The Obama Administration announced new steps to make it easier for highly skilled workers and talented researchers from other countries to contribute to our economy and ultimately become Americans. These measures are part of administrative reforms first announced in 2012, and reflect our commitment to attracting and retaining highly-skilled immigrants, continuing our economic recovery, and encouraging job creation.

    Specifically, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a proposed rule that would—for the first time—allow work authorization for the spouses of H-1B workers who have begun the process of applying for a green card through their employers. Once enacted, this proposed rule would empower these spouses to put their own education and skills to work for the country that they and their families now call home.  This rule change was requested in a “We the People” petition to the White House.

    At the same time, DHS is also proposing another new rule to make it easier for outstanding professors and researchers in other countries to demonstrate their eligibility for the EB-1 visa, a type of green card reserved for the world’s best and brightest. Just as great athletes and performers are already able to provide a range of evidence to support their petition for an EB-1, professors and researchers would be able to present diverse achievements such as groundbreaking patents or prestigious scientific grants.

    These measures build on continuing Administration efforts to streamline existing systems, eliminate inefficiency, and increase transparency, such as by the launch of Entrepreneur Pathways, an online resource center that gives immigrant entrepreneurs an intuitive way to navigate opportunities to start and grow a business in the United States.

    These actions promise to unleash more of the extraordinary contributions that immigrants have always made to America’s economy. By some estimates, immigration was responsible for one-third of the explosive growth in patenting in past decades, and these innovations contributed to increasing U.S. GDP by 2.4 percent. Immigrants represent 50 percent of PhDs working in math and computer science and 57 percent of PhDs working in engineering, and one study found that 26 percent of all U.S.-based Nobel laureates over the past 50 years were foreign born. 

    Immigrants are also overrepresented in the ranks of America’s entrepreneurs, as they are more than twice as likely as the native-born to start a business in the United States. Immigrants started one of every four small businesses and high-tech startups across America, and more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies—from GE and Ford to Google and Yahoo!—were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. 

    While today’s executive actions are an important step in the right direction, only Congress can offer permanent solutions to fix our broken immigration system and ensure that immigration pathways for foreign entrepreneurs and talented workers are clear and consistent, and better reflect today's business realities.

    Last June, the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill that would significantly grow our economy and shrink the deficit. It is imperative that the House of Representatives do its part to send a bill to the President’s desk, as the costs of inaction are considerable. Among the many other benefits of commonsense immigrant reform, we need legislation that will keep talented scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs here in America instead of compelling them to go back home and compete against us.

    When President Obama and I met last month with the new Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship, these top entrepreneurs spoke passionately about the contributions of immigrants and the importance of immigration reform for growing our economy. This group of successful American businesspeople who have committed to sharing their expertise to help develop the next generation of entrepreneurs at home and abroad agreed that we undermine our economic competitiveness when we make it harder, not easier, for talented immigrants to stay here and contribute to our economy.

    You can watch the video featuring inaugural Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship below, or on YouTube:

    _______________________________________
    When the European Union was formed borders opened and immigration soared.  People were fine with it until this decade of massive corporate fraud, deliberate economic stagnation, the TROIKA attack on Rule of Law and people's assets.  Now, Europeans are mad as heck over the Trans Atlantic Trade Pact just as we are with TPP.  It sells national sovereignty to global corporations.

    Now, people that would never be anti-immigrant are because of these policies.  The most progressive European nations are calling this Fascism.  My point is that this is where the US will be with these neo-liberal/neo-con market-based Immigration Reforms.  It will not help US immigrants---it will harm them.  So, if you support the right of immigrant families you need to be fighting for equal protection in the workplace and CITIZENSHIP NOW!


  • EU Elections: Anti-Immigrant Wave Sweeps Europe

  •  By IBTimes UK on May 26 2014 5:48 AM
    File photo of a huge euro sculpture in front of the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, Jan. 1, 2002. Reuters The far-right National Front has topped polls in France as countries across Europe have turned to extremist and anti-EU parties.
    
    The National Front led by Marine Le Pen has taken its largest share of the vote in its 40-year history with 25 percent of the votes, according to pollsters. The anti-immigration party has pledged to drastically cut immigration and reduce the influence of Islam. President Hollande's Socialist Party has been edged out into third place garnering just 13 percent of the vote.

    At a triumphant press conference, Le Pen, who took over the party founded by her controversial father, Jean Marie Le Pen, heralded a victory and said "the sovereign people of France have spoken loud and clear." She called on the French president to dissolve the country's government and call elections.

    "The people have taken back the reins of their own destiny,' she said."This means policies of the French, for the French, by the French. They do not want to be ruled from outside."

    Le Pen claims that the party today is removed from its racist and anti-Semitic roots with which it was synonymous under her father's leadership. The results have sent shockwaves throughout Europe heightening concerns that right-wing groups in the UK might similarly have received a boost in votes.  

    French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the National Front victory was "a political earthquake in France," while ecology minister Segolene Royale said: "It's a shock on a global scale."

    A report by Open Europe said: "Across Europe, all eyes are on the possible surge in anti-EU, populist, anti-immigrant or anti-establishment parties."


    There have been a number of successes for far-right and anti-EU parties across Europe, with early indications that a neo-Nazi candidate for the NPD party could be elected in Germany, giving the far-right a foothold for the first time in decades.

    In Greece, the anti-Europe Syriza party topped polls with about 27 percent of the vote and the extreme-right Golden Dawn party looked set to enter the European parliament for the first time, with three seats and about 9 percent of the vote.

    The party was Greece's third-most popular party and looked set to send three MEPs to Brussels. The extremist anti-Islam Danish People's Party also came first in that country's elections. In Italy, the Euroskeptic Five Star movement was tipped to come second.

    A surge in Euroskepticism across the continent led to an increased vote for protest parties -- mirroring the increased presence by UKIP in Britain. The National Front's vote was a full 11 percent higher than the ruling Socialists.

    In Sweden, the ant-fascist feminists won their first seat with the party placing in opposition to EU right-wing movements with the slogan, "Replace the racists with feminists!"

    No country was allowed to declare its results until the last polling booth closed across the continent -- in Italy at 11 p.m. and at 10 p.m., both local times.



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September 24th, 2014

9/24/2014

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WHY DO YOU THINK OBAMA IS GOING TO USE EXECUTIVE ORDERS TO PASS PARTS OF IMMIGRATION REFORM?  NO, NOT TO HELP HISPANICS-----TO ALLOW US CORPORATIONS TO BRING OPERATIONS HOME WITH IMMIGRANT LABOR TO KEEP COSTS AS THEY WERE OVERSEAS.  THE ENTIRE INFRASTRUCTURE BILL WILL BE ABOUT GLOBAL CORPORATIONS BEING HANDED THIS FEDERAL MONEY AND BRINGING WORKERS FROM THEIR OWN NATIONS TO WORK AS THEY DO OVERSEAS.

IF US WORKERS WANT A JOB---THEY WILL WORK FOR WHAT THESE IMMIGRANTS DO!


Johns Hopkins has an entire overseas business recruiting and bringing immigrant workers to the US.  They are being compared to the Brown University involvement in the early US slave trade because that is what happens with many of these immigrants once they leave their home countries.


A few days on the American worker starts with looking at how neo-liberals and neo-cons are bashing their way to lower wages in the US through policy like Affordable Care Act and Race to the Top-----Immigration Reform and Trans Pacific Trade Pact.  All of these policies have as a goal to lower the standards of life for all Americans to third world levels.  None of those policies were meant to do what your pols told you they were to do.  Better health care/better education for the poor----better protections for Hispanic immigrants already in the US----more professionalism?

ABSOLUTE HOOEY!!!!


When Microsoft hires an IT professional from say India----they pay 1/3 less than with a US citizen and that is why unemployment is high----it is why US college grads are having to settle for entry-level jobs, and it is why American students are being tracked into career colleges and low wage jobs.  The Immigration Bill allows Bill Gates to bring his IT employees from overseas.
  Same for teaching and nursing and all categories. 

SEE WHY THEY WANT TO GET RID OF CURRENT US PROFESSIONALS?


Working in the third world is not pretty for either uneducated or educated workers.  They are simply human assets to global corporations.  That is where you and I are going with our children and grandchildren if we do not get engaged to reverse this globalism----


Average salaries for Big Data professionals with Hadoop skills is Rs 13 lakhs per annum.  10 lakhs is about $22,000

On average, American data professionals earn three times as much as those in Asia and twice as much as those located in Africa.


"After all, some of the fastest growing job categories are expected to be in so-called "middle-skill" positions such as nursing, which do not require a full, four-year education."

A Registered Nurse must have a 4 year degree.



Why America’s Nurses Are Burning Out
  • By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Stress and fatigue top the list of on-the-job health concerns. So what can be done? Getty

A nursing shortage and long hours has led to high levels of burnout in nurses.

Video: Shift Changes in Hospitals Can Put Patients at Risk



Annette Tersigni decided at the age of 48 that she wanted to make a difference. She attended nursing school and became a registered nurse three years later. “Having that precious pair of letters – RN – at the end of my name gave me everything I wanted,” she writes on her website. Before long, Tersigni discovered the rewards – as well as the physical and emotional challenges – that come with nursing.

“I was always stressed when I worked, afraid to get sued for making a mistake or medical error,” says Tersigni, who was working in the heart transplant unit of a North Carolina hospital. “Plus, working the night shift caused me to gain weight and stop working out.” Tersigni moved to another hospital, but the long shifts continued. Three years later, she left her job.

Tersigni’s experience isn’t unusual. Three out of four nurses cited the effects of stress and overwork as a top health concern in a 2011 survey by the American Nurses Association. The ANA attributed problems of fatigue and burnout to “a chronic nursing shortage.” A 2012 report in the American Journal of Medical Quality projected a shortage of registered nurses to spread across the country by 2030.


Work schedules and insufficient staffing are among the factors driving many nurses to leave the profession. American nurses often put in 12-hour shifts over the course of a three-day week. Research found nurses who worked shifts longer than eight to nine hours were two-and-a-half times more likely to experience burnout.


  “Our results show that nurses are underestimating their own recovery time from long, intense clinical engagement, and that consolidating challenging work into three days may not be a sustainable strategy to attain the work-life balance they seek,” says study author Linda Aiken, PhD, director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.



Deborah Burger, RN, co-president of the union and professional association National Nurses United, doesn’t believe that long work shifts tell the whole story. “Most people can work a 10- or 12-hour shift if they’ve got the right support and right level of staffing,” Burger says.

“In order for nurses to feel satisfied and fulfilled with their work, the staffing issues must be seriously addressed from a very high level,” says Eva Francis, MSN, RN, CCRN, a former nursing administrator.
“Nurses also need to be able to express themselves professionally about the workload, and be heard without the fear of threat to their jobs or the fear of being singled out.”

A new study suggests that nurses’ burnout risk may be related to what drew them to the profession in the first place. Researchers at the University of Akron in Ohio surveyed more than 700 RNs and found that nurses who are motivated primarily by the desire to help others, rather than by enjoyment of the work, were more likely to burn out.

“We assume that people that go into nursing because they are highly motived by helping others are the best nurses,” says study author Janette Dill, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Akron. “But our findings suggest these nurses may be prone to burnout and other negative physical symptoms.”



That finding doesn’t surprise Jill O’Hara, a former nurse from Hamburg, NY, who left nursing more than a decade ago.

“When a person goes into nursing as a profession, it’s either because it’s a career path or a calling,” says O’Hara, 56, who now operates her own holistic health consulting practice. “The career nurse can leave work at the end of the day and let it go, but the nurse who enters the field because she is called to it takes those emotionally charged encounters home with her. They are empathetic, literally connecting emotionally with their patients, and it becomes a part of them energetically.”

Besides driving many nurses out of the profession, burnout can compromise the quality of patient care. A study of Pennsylvania hospitals found a “significant association” between high patient-to-nurse ratios and nurse burnout with increased infections among patients. The authors’ conclusion: A reduction in burnout is good for nurses and patients.


______________________________________________



Why So Many Of America's Teachers Are Leaving The Profession

Posted: 11/05/2013 5:51 am EST Updated: 01/23/2014 6:58 pm EST    Huffington Post


The vast majority of teachers are working overtime without the tools or budget to manage the plethora of issues inside and outside the classroom. On top of that, administrators who only compound the situation by micromanaging the wrong things make the lives of teachers completely untenable with their lack of support.

Most teaching preparation programs including the one Mr. Owens attended do not adequately prepare anyone for life in the classroom. For many beginning teachers, "It was as though I had just joined the circus as an apprentice clown and was immediately required to juggle plates, bowling pins, butcher's knives, and axes all day long while walking along a tightrope in midair." Teachers make more decisions per hour than any other job including what to do with a student who falls behind, manage students with learning or emotional problems, tailor each lesson every day to up to 125 students or more who are somewhere between illiterate and highly gifted.

Sadly some administrators, students and parents instead of partnering with teachers, blame "teachers which is easier than doing a massive system overhaul."

We need "teachers who can present a passion for the greatness and potential of learning and the greatness and potential of America." I believe John Owens wanted to be one of those people. His unsuccessful attempt to complete one year in the classroom paints an ugly and honest picture of life in many American schools today. The statistics from the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future show that his experience is not unique as "in urban districts, close to 50 percent of newcomers leave the profession during their first five years of teaching."

Many non-teachers claim that teaching is an easy life with long vacations. However, as Owens shares his daily routine it is a job way past full time hours, "I spent virtually every waking hour -- 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. -- all week long on my teacher duties. Lessons, backup lessons, tutoring students during lunch and after school, PowerPoints, grading, inputting data, inputting more data, meeting with parents, observing experienced teachers to learn their techniques, meeting with my bosses, updating databases, writing reports, and trying to get help from someone for the struggling students in my classes." All teachers are familiar with the many hours required to keep lessons, grades and life engaging and organized.

Most of the teachers I have worked with have been caring and concerned both with doing a great job and meeting the needs of each student. However, "every second of the day was filled with demands and -- sadly -- students whose needs still weren't being addressed despite all the efforts I could put in." Even with the frustrations of not being able to do enough, Owens wishes to be a better teacher and contribute to his students and society but the principal is not interesting in supporting his contributions as a new teacher.

Owens creates an enthusiastic response from his students but he is reprimanding for his class being too noisy. He has many meetings and moments with the principal as he is warned that he will receive an unsatisfactory rating for his first year skills. He learns that "inspiring, empowering, really teaching these students" is not enough.

Many teachers are leaving the profession, as "America is demanding too much from its teachers without giving them the proper support to educate students effectively. Commitment, caring, pushing for results, and putting in a full work's day no longer seem to be enough...Often, I felt like a soldier dropped behind enemy lines with nothing more than orders. No weapon. No helmet. No hope of reinforcements." I was disappointed and frustrated to learn about his challenges, and it reminded me of many situations and schools were I have been forced to work with incompetent management.

Students want to share themselves and deserve teachers who can be present and focus on them from "Rikkie, the bright, defiant ninth grader, who did a long piece about how prison isn't so bad to a ninth-grade girl wrote about the day she saw her father get arrested in the neighborhood check-cashing store." Students need caring supportive teachers, not teachers who feel threatened that they will lose their job for showing enthusiasm and initiative. Teachers need to work in an environment where they can thrive.

In Los Angeles, new teachers and old can find mentorship and engaging lessons with the Los Angeles Science Teachers Network. In response to an overwhelming situation in 2009, I created this network for professional development, support and camaraderie. Administrators cannot do everything and we all must participate to improve learning for the children. Do not listen to the blame. Do something about it. We are each responsible to do what we can. Write a blog, start a network, help a child and find a way to feel supported in the classroom. America needs you.

About the Author: Lisa Niver Rajna was a 2012 nominee for the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching. She was the first teacher to appear on Career Day. She and her husband George are on a career break sharing their world adventures on We Said Go Travel.


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This is why so many college grads are unemployed-----corporations are refusing to hire 4 year US graduates with a broad and in depth education and going with career college certificate/associate grads.  Meanwhile, the number of skilled-labor hiring is soaring for immigrants staying in the US.

The American people as a whole are being tracked into vocational career paths that lead to low-end employment with the ability to get into higher education declining.  The will to go to higher education is deliberately defused by the demand by corporations hiring for this career college, job-ready training status.
  So, American students are being forced into a path that will have them coming back over and over and over each time they change jobs and never having a deep understanding of a particular field or professionalism.  This is not the students fault nor is it an indication that American students are not able to achieve.....it is how the privatization of public education is processing children.  I've talked before about taxpayers now being the Human Resources Department for corporations.  Today I am addressing how American citizens are being deliberately marginalized as the world's 'best of the best' become hired into the higher-skilled jobs.  These people are not necessarily the 'best of the best'----most are simply connected to a wealthy family overseas. 

This translates to lower quality of services as employees receive less education for employment----it creates constant turnover and less likelihood people are working in fields for which they are passionate---and all this creates a massive underclass-----WHICH IS THE GOAL OF NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.

Above we see a deliberate expulsion of the American professional class, teachers and nursing, with burn out created by health care and education moving to profit-driven mode.  Staff are commodities.


April 23, 2012


Why are college grads so underemployed? "More than half of America's recent college graduates are either unemployed or working in a job that doesn't require a bachelor's degree...."


When there were fewer graduates, a generic college degree used to be a valuable credential. Now that the market is flooded, diplomas count less, and specific skills count more. This means that, in many instances, associates and technical degrees may be more financially valuable than a liberal arts degree. After all, some of the fastest growing job categories are expected to be in so-called "middle-skill" positions such as nursing, which do not require a full, four-year education. It's one more sign that, for people seeking to fix America's employment picture, "college for all" is the wrong mantra. We need to be talking about "skills for all" instead.


______________________________________________

Trades employees know the status of this dynamic best.  What they do not know is that the competition for jobs currently between US workers and Hispanic workers will explode as Trans Pacific Trade Pact brings immigrants from all over the world to work cheaper than US workers.  That is why having the national AFL-CIO leaders backing neo-liberals is not good.  National labor leaders backing neo-liberals are saying---go ahead, flood the market with immigrants and we will organize those poor workers.  The Hispanic workers now getting more employment will compete with labor from Africa and Asia with even lower standards of living than US immigrants.  Hispanic labor is often only bringing in $40 and day----Asian immigrants are used to earning $2 a day.
This is what is planned for the infrastructure funding being promised by neo-liberals in Congress----they are waiting for Trans Pacific Trade Pact to allow for the flood of immigrants.  Obama is going to take executive action to install TPP and those increased immigrant worker quotas and it will be large!  Trade unions are being used by corporate pols thinking they are the ones to get these jobs. 

AGAIN, IT IS NOT THE IMMIGRANT'S FAULT---LABOR KEEPS SUPPORTING AND ELECTING NEO-LIBERALS.

Most of the immigrants being brought to the US already are told they are coming to something much better than they get.  The US is now involved in slave labor as in the Railroad Tycoons bringing the Chinese and Irish to work slavishly on US railroads---that is what neo-liberals and neo-cons are working to make of US workers. 

We no longer have a wild west where you can go to make your own living---

Unemployment for trades in the US-----

Boilersmakers-----20%
Paving Equipment Operators ----20%
Structural Iron Workers ----22%
Rebar Workers ----27%
Plasterers ---31%
Mobile Home Installers ---36%



______________________________________________


This is why US nurses and teachers are being burned out, why our unions and trades are seeing higher unemployment and it is why quality is falling in all industries-----neo-liberals and neo-cons are undermining US professionalism and the ability to earn strong salaries with outsourcing professional jobs.  From manufacturing plants to high tech and medical professions-----US corporations are going to use the flooding of the US job market with immigrant workers in order to lower even further American wages.  Remember, in third world societies doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs are as poor as everyone else.  This is what the Immigration Bill passed by the Senate is all about and it is why Obama is yet again going to use executive orders to raise the number of high-skilled immigrant labor coming to the US.  He will pretend it is all about Hispanic workers already in the US but it actually marginalizes Hispanic workers.

The American people who do not care how little people are paid must be ready for third world labor standards.  People having not lived under US Constitutional law do not know what they have been missing----which is the point!


WHEN LABOR UNIONS, JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS, AND MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICA KEEP SUPPORTING NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS THEY ARE SUPPORTING THIS DYNAMIC.  GLOBAL CORPORATIONS WILL BRING PEOPLE TO WORK ANY JOB AT ANY WAGE WITH TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT. 

If you are an American you will work how those third world laborers work or be unemployed they say.  US standards for business and manufacturing? 

FORGET ABOUT IT---THESE IMMIGRANT WORKERS WILL NOT REQUIRE THIS.



How to Cut Skilled-Labor Costs

By Nancy Folbre July 30, 2012 6:00 amJuly 30, 2012 6:00 am

Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

To import or to outsource? That is the question. Recent discussions of expanding access to H1-B visas highlight the tensions between employers in the United States in search of highly skilled employees and highly educated American citizens who face increasingly stiff competition in the global labor market.



Much of the discussion about expanding H1-B visas focuses on whether there are particular areas of “skill shortage” despite persistently high unemployment. The more fundamental question is how much American employers can cut their costs either by importing highly skilled workers or exporting highly skilled jobs.

The answer is, a lot.

Since the 1990s, the global supply of skilled labor has greatly expanded and the technology for using this labor wherever it is has greatly improved. Why hire a more expensive employee when a cheaper one is available? Why pay taxes to educate and train highly skilled workers when other countries (and their families and taxpayers) will do that for you?

The disruptive impacts of globalization initially hammered workers without much education. Many workers holding college degrees remained optimistic about the benefits of international trade, celebrating improvements in their own purchasing power.

Now, my students can decide for themselves if lower prices will compensate them for reduced opportunities and lower wages. More than half of recent college graduates in the United States are either unemployed or are working in a job that doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree. Entry-level wages for employed college graduates were lower in 2011 than in 2000.

The current global recession isn’t the only cause. The economist Richard Freeman provides an extraordinarily clear account of what he calls “The Great Doubling” of labor supply resulting from structural changes that brought China and India more directly into the global marketplace.

Rather than relying merely on low-wage competition, China and India, like many developing countries, invested heavily in higher education and scientific training. While college graduates represent a small occupational elite within their large labor force, their absolute numbers are high compared with those homegrown in the United States.

College students in the United States who major in science, technology, engineering and mathematics – often referred to as STEM fields – definitely face better prospects in the labor market than others do. But even they need to be aware of intensified competition down the road.

Many software engineers and others in the information technology field feel particularly aggrieved about the effects of the H1-B visa program. The computer scientist Norman Matloff, who maintains a Web site on the topic, asserts that it enables employers to hire younger and less expensive workers, leaving many highly skilled, older programmers in the lurch.

Workers with H1-B visas have a strong incentive to remain with the employer for whom it was issued in order to obtain a green card, allowing permanent residence in the United States, in a timely fashion. As a result, they have relatively little bargaining power.

Professor Matloff, who favors extensive changes to the H1-B visa program, also warns of the growing impact of outsourcing on jobs for computer science majors. Further, he observes that high-tech companies insisting that there is a shortage of STEM workers with advanced degrees in the United States don’t seem willing to invest much in increased financial support for graduate education.

Maybe college students should seek jobs that seem less vulnerable to global competition, in fields like health sciences. But I just read an article about health care companies sending jobs overseas that gave me palpitations.


The economist Alan Blinder asserts that high educational requirements can make a job more rather than less “offshorable.” Most large American companies have already figured this out – but it’s not clear how many college students have.

I hate to be the one to break the news.

______________________________________________

We see Hispanic leaders understand what is coming----better than US workers.  The problems listed below are about to soar as labor from around the world is brought to be exploited even more than our Hispanic workers.  As Americans are silent about neo-liberal and neo-con assaults on our civil rights and liberties----think about what a third world autocracy looks like and how the people who are citizens fair---

That is where this 21st Century Economy is going.

We simply need to WAKE UP and engage in politics and send these global corporate pols packing.  We can rebuild a domestic economy and reverse the damage to the US Constitution that was illegal to begin with. Do not allow yet another round of labor abuse build with these reforms!

NATIONAL LABOR UNIONS LEADERS KNOW THIS IS WHAT IS COMING----THEY NEED TO STOP SUPPORTING NEO-LIBERALS


New face of the war on immigrants?: US immigration reform

The reform plays a balancing act for a stable supply of cheap labour and a viable system of state control of immigrants. Last Modified: 10 Jul 2013 11:42 William I. Robinson
William I. Robinson a professor of sociology and global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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An immigration reform that’s inclusive of 11m undocumented people passed the US senate June 27 [Getty Images]

After years of false starts, the US Congress now seems set to pass some version of long-awaited immigrant reform legislation. On June 27 the Senate passed a bill that observers have referred to as the "most monumental overhaul" of US immigration laws in a generation and the House is set to begin debate on reform legislation later in July.

But immigrant rights organisations are deeply divided. Some groups have given critical support to the proposed legislation as the "best bill possible" under current conditions for the estimated 11-12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States to normalise their status. Many others, however, have rejected what they see as a punitive Faustian bargain. They condemn the bill as an attempt to deny rights, codify repression, legitimate the criminalisation of immigrants, further the militarised control of their communities, and reproduce a system of de facto labour peonage.

Although the bill supposedly provides a "pathway to citizenship" for immigrants, the conditions under which undocumented immigrants can legalise their status are so onerous that it is estimated that between one-third and two-thirds of the undocumented will be unable meet the criteria. This criteria includes having an income of 125 per cent of the federal poverty guideline, which would make millions of immigrants who now work for minimum wage or less ineligible, as well as no lapses of employment for more than 60 days during a decade of provisional status, paying hefty fees and fines, passing a criminal background check, learning English and US civics and history.

The bill denies immigrants access to public services. It does not lift the repressive "Secure Communities" and "287g" government programmes. These two federal programs establish broad collabouration between the federal government and local and state law enforcement in policing immigrant communities, in raids, detentions, and deportations.

More ominous, the bill hinges on so-called "border security". If proposes to increase spending by nearly $50bn on militarising the 2,000 mile US-Mexico border (some 3,200 km), doubling the number of Border Patrol agents to some 40,000 (one agent for every 88 yards or 80 meters), to add 700 miles of fencing, to deploy drones, Blackhawk helicopters, surveillance towers, sensors, and former army soldiers to the border.

It would mandate a universal "E-verify" system, by which workers must prove they are eligible for employment before being hired, introduce biometric ID for immigrant workers, stipulate unprecedented collabouration between local and state police agencies and the Department of Homeland Security for database sharing, detention, and transfer of detainees, and sets up a "guest worker" programme that amounts to little more than indentured servitude.

It is no wonder that National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights board member Hamid Khan described the bill as a model for the "surveillance industrial complex." Under the guise of public safety and security, "the bill is a political investment in the further strengthening and legitimisation of the police state," he said.

Global capitalism and immigrant labour

The reform...meets the interests of the immigrant military-prison-industrial-detention complex. Military contractors, Silicon Valley, law enforcement, construction and private prison companies stand to earn billions in profits.

,

The larger story behind immigration reform is capitalist globalisation and the worldwide reorganisation of the system for supplying labour to the global economy. Over the past few decades there has been an upsurge in transnational migration as every country and region has become integrated, often violently, into global capitalism through foreign invasions and occupations, free trade agreements, neo-liberal social and economic policies, and financial crises. Hundreds of millions have been displaced from the countryside in the Global South and turned into internal and transnational migrants, providing a vast new pool of exploitable labour for the global economy as national labour markets have increasingly merged into a global labour market.

The creation of immigrant labour pools is a worldwide phenomenon, in which poles of accumulation in the global economy attract immigrant labour from their peripheries. Thus, to name a few of the major 21st century transnational labour flows, Turkish and Eastern European workers supply labour to Western Europe, Central Africans to South Africa, Nicaraguans to Costa Rica, Sri Lankas and other South Asians to the Middle East oil producing countries, Asians to Australia, Thais to Japan, Indonesians to Malaysia, and so on.

In all of these cases, it is repressive state controls that create "immigrant workers" as a distinct category of labour that becomes central to the whole global capitalist economy. As borders have come down for capital and goods they have been reinforced for human beings. While global capitalism creates immigrant workers, these workers do not enjoy citizenship rights in their host countries. Stripped either de facto or de jure of the political, civic, and labour rights afforded to citizens, immigrant workers are forced into the underground, made vulnerable to employers, whether large private or state employers or affluent families, and subject to hostile cultural and ideological environments.

Neither employers nor the state want to do away with immigrant labour. To the contrary, they want to sustain a vast exploitable labour pool that exists under precarious conditions and that is flexible and disposable through deportation and therefore controllable. This super-exploitation of an immigrant workforce would not be possible if that workforce had the same civil, political and labour rights as citizens, if it did not face the insecurities and vulnerabilities of being undocumented or "illegal".

Driving immigrant labour underground and absolving the state and employers of any commitment to the social reproduction of this labour allows for its maximum exploitation together with its disposal when necessary. In this way the immigrant labour force becomes responsible for its own maintenance and reproduction and also - through remittances - for their family members abroad. This makes immigrant labour low-cost and flexible for capital and also costless for the state compared to native born labour.

In sum, the division of the global working class into citizen and immigrant is a major new axis of inequality worldwide. Borders and nationality are used by transnational capital, the powerful and the privileged, to sustain new methods of control and domination over the global working class.

The US economy has become increasingly dependent on immigrant labour. There are an estimated 34 million immigrants in the United States, 20 million of these from Latin America, and 11-12 million undocumented, most of them of Latin American origin. 

This is, however, a contradictory situation. From the viewpoint of the dominant groups the dilemma is how to super-exploit an immigrant labour force, such as Latinos in the US, yet how to simultaneously assure it is super controllable and super-controlled. The push in the United States and elsewhere has been towards heightened criminalisation of immigrant communities, the militarised control of these communities, and the establishment of an immigrant detention and deportation complex.

The immigrant military-prison-industrial-detention complex

But there is another less evident dimension to the criminalisation of immigrants and the militarised control of their communities and the border.

The immigrant military-prison-industrial-detention complex is one of the fastest growing sectors of the US economy. There has been a boom in new private prison construction to house immigrants detained during deportation proceedings. In 2007 nearly one million undocumented immigrants were apprehended and 311,000 deported. The Obama administration presents itself as a friend of Latinos (and immigrants more generally) yet Obama has deported more immigrants than any other in the past half a century - some 400,000 per year since he took office in 2009.

Immigrant labour is extremely profitable for the corporate economy in double sense. First, as noted, it is labour that is highly vulnerable, forced to exist semi-underground, and deportable, and therefore super-exploitable. Second, the criminalisation of undocumented immigrants and the militarisation of their control not only reproduce these conditions of vulnerability but also in themselves generate vast new opportunities for accumulation. 


The private immigrant detention complex is a boom industry. Undocumented immigrants constitute the fastest growing sector of the US prison population and are detained in private detention centres and deported by private companies contracted out by the US state. As of 2010 there were 270 immigration detention centres that caged on any given day over 30,000 immigrants. Since detainment facilities and deportation logistics are subcontracted to private companies, capital has a vested interest in the criminalisation of immigrants and in the militarisation of control over immigrants - and more broadly, therefore, a vested interest in contributing to the neo-fascist anti-immigrant movement.

It is no surprise that William Andrews, the CEO of the Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA, the largest private US contractor for immigrant detention centres, declared in 2008 that "the demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts…or through decriminalisation [of immigrants]." A month after the anti-immigrant bill in Arizona, SB1070, became law, Wayne Callabres, the president of Geo Group, another private prison contractor, held a conference call with investors and explained his company’s aspirations. "Opportunities at the federal level are going to continue apace as a result of what’s happening," he said, referring to the Arizona law. "Those people coming across the border being caught are going to have to be detained and that to me at least suggests there’s going to be enhanced opportunities for what we do."

Containing the immigrant rights movement

The "war on terror" paved the way for an undeclared war on immigrants by fusing "national security/anti-terrorism" with immigration law enforcement, involving designation of borders and immigrant flows as "terrorism threats," the approval of vast new funding and the passage of a slew of policies and laws to undertake the new war.

This war has further escalated in response to the spread worldwide of an immigrant rights movement to fight-back against repression, exploitation, exclusion, cultural degradation and racism. A major turning point in this struggle in the United States came in spring 2006 with a series of unparalleled strikes and demonstrations that swept the country.

The immediate trigger for these mass protests was the introduction in the US Congress of a bill, known as the Sensenbrenner bill, that called for criminalising undocumented immigrants by making it a felony to be in the US without proper documentation. It also stipulated construction of a militarised wall between Mexico and the US and the application of criminal sanctions against anyone who provided assistance to undocumented immigrants, including churches, humanitarian groups, and social service agencies.

The protests defeated the Sensenbrenner bill and at the same time frightened the ruling class, sparking an escalation of state repression and racist nativism and fuelled the neo-fascist anti-immigrant movement. The backlash involved, among other things, stepped-up raids on immigrant workplaces and communities, mass deportations, an increase in the number of federal immigration enforcement agents, the deputizing of local police forces as enforcement agents, the further militarisation of the US-Mexico border, anti-immigrant hysteria in the mass media, and the introduction at local, state, and federal levels of a slew of discriminatory anti-immigrant legislative initiatives.

Anti-immigrant hate groups had already been on the rise in the years prior to 2006. The FBI reported more than 2,500 hate crimes against Latinos in the United States between 2000 and 2006. Blatantly racist public discourse that only a few years earlier would have been considered extreme became increasingly mainstreamed and aired on the mass media. The paramilitary organisation Minutemen, a modern day Latino-hating version of the Ku Klux Klan, spread in the first decade of the 21st century from its place of origin along the US-Mexican border in Arizona and California to other parts of the country. Minutemen claimed they must "secure the border" in the face of inadequate state-sponsored control. Their discourse, as well as that of the Tea Party and other such groups, beyond racist, was neo-fascist.

Lifting national borders for capital and simultaneously reinforcing these same national boundaries is a contradictory situation that helps generate a nationalist hysteria by propagating such images as "out of control borders" and "invasions of illegal immigrants". Racist hostility towards Latinos and other immigrants may be intentionally generated by right-wing politicians, law-enforcement agents and neo-fascist anti-immigrant movements. They may be the effect of the structural and legal-institutional subordination of immigrant workers and their communities, or simply an unintended (although not necessarily unwelcomed) byproduct of the state’s coercive policies.

The crisis, cooptation, and reform legislation

White middle and world class sectors in the US faced downward mobility and heightened insecurities as the welfare state and job stability have been dismantled in the face of capitalist globalisation. These sectors have been particularly prone to being organised into racist anti-immigrant politics by conservative political groups housed inside and outside of the Republican Party. Anti-immigrant forces have tried to draw in white workers with appeals to racial solidarity and to xenophobia and scapegoating of immigrant communities.

The scapegoating of these communities reached a zenith in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse and the onset of crisis. The crisis intensified anti-immigrant hysteria, fueled by a right-wing, racist and xenophobic anti-immigrant movement. Dozens of state and local governments around the country passed repressive anti-immigrant legislation, among them, Arizona’s SB1070 and Alabama’s HB56, both of which institutionalised racial profiling and the terrorisation of immigrant communities.

The magazine Mother Jones built a database of hundreds of repressive local and state level anti-immigrant laws introduced around the US in the wake of SB1070, including 164 such laws passed by state legislatures in 2010 and 2011 alone. The database as well uncovered the extensive interlocking of far-right organisations comprising the anti-immigrant movement, other neo-fascist organisations in civil society (see above), government agencies and elected officials (local and federal), politicians, and corporate and foundation funders, lobbies, and activists.

If there is a broad social and political base for the maintenance of a flexible, super-controlled and super-exploited Latino immigrant workforce, the immigrant issue presents a contradiction for political and economic elites: from the vantage points of dominant group interests, the dilemma is how to deal with the new "barbarians" at Rome’s door. The state must play a balancing act by finding a formula for a stable supply of cheap labour to employers and at the same time for a viable system of state control over immigrants.

It is widely recognised that Obama’s 2012 reelection hinged heavily on the Latino vote, and that this voting bloc is expanding rapidly, something that has caused important sectors of the Republican Party to reconsider immigration reform. It may be that the 2012 vote gave the necessary impetus to bringing together a critical mass around the reformation of the strategy and methods for reproducing and controlling a reserve army of immigrant labour.

The reform legislation passed in the Senate on June 27 meets the interests of the immigrant military-prison-industrial-detention complex. Military contractors, Silicon Valley, law enforcement, construction and private prison companies stand to earn billions in profits. Agribusiness and the corporate sector will continue to exploit a largely captive labour force, racialised and relegated to second class status, especially among the millions of immigrants who will be unable to legalise their status, among new immigrants, and among those brought in as "guest workers". It is no wonder that along with corporate lobbyists staunch anti-immigrant conservatives such as Arizona governor Jan Brewer, FOX News commentator Bill O’Reilly, and Tea Party icon Rand Paul, have endorsed the bill.

The Obama strategy may prove to be quite successful in establishing the conditions for a reformulation of strategies and methods of immigrant social control and political co-optation. In the wake of the 2006 mass immigrant rights protests and the fierce state repression that ensued, Washington DC-based foundations broadly funded the more moderate and mainstream of the Latino and immigrant rights organisations, while the Democratic Party set about to separate the "establishment" Latino leadership from the radical organisers at the mass grassroots base and to recruit this leadership for the Obama project.

These diverse developments - state repression, anti-immigrant politics, establishment and Democratic cooptation - all came together in recent years and paid off by throwing the grassroots movement onto the defensive, bolstering Democratic Party hegemony among immigrants, and generating a critical mass for exactly the kind of conservative and repressive immigration reform legislation now in Congress.

William I. Robinson a professor of sociology and global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.


The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.


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September 23rd, 2014

9/23/2014

0 Comments

 
Neo-liberals/neo-cons and labor union leaders are joining to move what will be a disaster for labor and the environment.  Labor unions are doing it because they are trying to keep their union organizing rights and find jobs but this is not the way to go folks. 

See where many of the immigrants coming to the US are being sent----

There is a true rift between labor and justice as regards environmental laws.  This is very bad because progressive Democrats are environmental and they also support labor.  Having labor unions choosing the ploy of jobs to ignore environment is a corporate ploy to divide and conquer labor and justice and unions are biting.
  This is why everyone should be concerned with this deliberate stagnation of the US economy and super-sized unemployment.  If people cannot get jobs they are going to vote for Chinese-style environmental devastation.....courtesy of Trans Pacific Trade Pact.  If you are that 20% soon to be 10% that are remaining prosperous at the expense of others----you will live in this Chinese labor and environmental mess.

PLEASE DO NOT LET GLOBAL CORPORATIONS MAKE WORKERS SO DESPERATE FOR JOBS THAT THEY SELL OUT THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND ENVIRONMENT.

Below you see the union 'Made in America'....they do not know how ugly Tech Industry manufacturing can be.  Neo-liberals are already creating vocational tracks for children to enter these Tech Industry jobs----whether coding or manufacturing it will be the worst of jobs as I showed yesterday. There are many kinds of manufacturing that could come back----many of them will be the high-tech manufacturing that kills workers and environment.

B
ring Back American Jobs And Buy Products Made In The USA




Some companies will do anything to hide where their products are made. The simple reality is that a product is not Made in the USA when the label reads:

Designed And Engineered In The USA
Formulated In The USA
Produced By (Company)
A Product Of North America
Distributed By (Company)
Manufactured By (Company)
A Product of (Company), Printed By (Company), Prepared By (Company)
Created In The USA

Or If It Only Shows The Company Name And Address.


_____________________________________________

Well, there is Molycorp here in the US preparing to do here what they did in China.  I shared yesterday what they left in China. Think fracking and mountain-top removal is extreme---neo-liberals and neo-cons say-----Chinese conditions for US labor and justice is a go!
  This is what your national labor unions are supporting when they supporting neo-liberals!  Tell them to run and vote for labor and justice!

Well, it's job creation!


Hitler turned each nation he conquered into war industry. WAKE UP!

So, here we go----the US becomes China as the environment is degraded and Trans Pacific Trade Pact takes labor to third world simply because you keep voting for neo-liberals!

What happens to people who work these jobs and live near them?  They die!


Mining firm says rare mineral deposit bigger

The Associated Press 09/22/2014 6:05 PM

09/22/2014 6:06 PM

miamiherald

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article2207425.html#storylink=cpyELK CREEK, Neb. This summer's drilling to explore a deposit of a rare heat-resistant element in southeast Nebraska prompted a Canadian mining firm to increase its estimate of the deposit's size.

NioCorp Developments said Monday that the latest drilling results show that the niobium deposit near Elk Creek is even bigger than expected.

The company also said Monday that it plans to raise up to $16.5 million through private placement to support the Elk Creek project.

____________________________________________

This is what those US states are going to look like and it will come all over America......do you hear your environmental group shouting this in Maryland?  Your pol/your pundit?  If not, you need to get rid of the leadership and get engaged -----we can reverse this if we stop voting for neo-liberals and neo-cons!  It's always the poor Republican voters who get taken by their pols and now the Democratic states taken by neo-liberals.

Rare-earth mining in China comes at a heavy cost for local villages

Pollution is poisoning the farms and villages of the region that processes the precious minerals
  •  
  • Guardian Weekly, Tuesday 7 August 2012 08.59 EDT


Health hazard ... pipes coming from a rare-earth smelting plant spew into a tailings dam on the outskirts of Baotou in China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters

From the air it looks like a huge lake, fed by many tributaries, but on the ground it turns out to be a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world, collectively known as rare earths.

The town of Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, is the largest Chinese source of these strategic elements, essential to advanced technology, from smartphones to GPS receivers, but also to wind farms and, above all, electric cars. The minerals are mined at Bayan Obo, 120km farther north, then brought to Baotou for processing.

The concentration of rare earths in the ore is very low, so they must be separated and purified, using hydro-metallurgical techniques and acid baths. China accounts for 97% of global output of these precious substances, with two-thirds produced in Baotou.

The foul waters of the tailings pond contain all sorts of toxic chemicals, but also radioactive elements such as thorium which, if ingested, cause cancers of the pancreas and lungs, and leukaemia. "Before the factories were built, there were just fields here as far as the eye can see. In the place of this radioactive sludge, there were watermelons, aubergines and tomatoes," says Li Guirong with a sigh.

It was in 1958 – when he was 10 – that a state-owned concern, the Baotou Iron and Steel company (Baogang), started producing rare-earth minerals. The lake appeared at that time. "To begin with we didn't notice the pollution it was causing. How could we have known?" As secretary general of the local branch of the Communist party, he is one of the few residents who dares to speak out.

Towards the end of the 1980s, Li explains, crops in nearby villages started to fail: "Plants grew badly. They would flower all right, but sometimes there was no fruit or they were small or smelt awful." Ten years later the villagers had to accept that vegetables simply would not grow any longer. In the village of Xinguang Sancun – much as in all those near the Baotou factories – farmers let some fields run wild and stopped planting anything but wheat and corn.

A study by the municipal environmental protection agency showed that rare-earth minerals were the source of their problems. The minerals themselves caused pollution, but also the dozens of new factories that had sprung up around the processing facilities and a fossil-fuel power station feeding Baotou's new industrial fabric. Residents of what was now known as the "rare-earth capital of the world" were inhaling solvent vapour, particularly sulphuric acid, as well as coal dust, clearly visible in the air between houses.

Now the soil and groundwater are saturated with toxic substances. Five years ago Li had to get rid of his sick pigs, the last survivors of a collection of cows, horses, chickens and goats, killed off by the toxins.

The farmers have moved away. Most of the small brick houses in Xinguang Sancun, huddling close to one another, are going to rack and ruin. In just 10 years the population has dropped from 2,000 to 300 people.

Lu Yongqing, 56, was one of the first to go. "I couldn't feed my family any longer," he says. He tried his luck at Baotou, working as a mason, then carrying bricks in a factory, finally resorting to selling vegetables at local markets, with odd jobs on the side. Registered as farmers in their identity papers, the refugees from Xinguang Sancun are treated as second-class citizens and mercilessly exploited.

The farmers who have stayed on tend to gather near the mahjong hall. "I have aching legs, like many of the villagers. There's a lot of diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems. All the families are affected by illness," says He Guixiang, 60. "I've been knocking on government doors for nearly 20 years," she says. "To begin with I'd go every day, except Sundays."

By maintaining the pressure, the villagers have obtained the promise of financial compensation, as yet only partly fulfilled. There has been talk of new housing, too. Neatly arranged tower blocks have gone up a few kilometres west of their homes. They were funded by compensation paid by Baogang to the local government.

But the buildings stand empty. The government is demanding that the villagers buy the right to occupy their flat, but they will not be able to pass it on to their children.

Some tried to sell waste from the pond, which still has a high rare-earth content, to reprocessing plants. The sludge fetched about $300 a tonne.

But the central government has recently deprived them of even this resource. One of their number is on trial and may incur a 10-year prison sentence.

This article originally appeared in Le Monde

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Rare Earths in the United States

Monday July 29, 2013, 4:25am PDT By Staff Writer+ - Exclusive to Rare Earth Investing News

  The rare earth elements are a group of 17 elements on the periodic table composed of the lanthanides, yttrium and scandium. They are typically discovered together but are considered rare because they are not often found in large, commercially viable concentrations.

Rare earth elements are used for manufacturing high-tech products like MRI scanners and cell phones. China has thus far been the largest supplier of rare earth elements, but analysts from the US Geological Survey (USGS) recently determined the United States is sitting on a sizable untapped reserve of them in the west part of the country. New extraction techniques will allow companies to access this rare earth in old mine tailings, ABC reported.

Currently, mining company Molycorp operates the only site in the United States that produces rare earth elements, according to ABC. Its Phoenix Project is located in California. Otherwise, the USGS recognizes Idaho, Montana, Alaska and Colorado as some of the locations of economically viable rare earth deposits.

Get the latest Rare Earth Investing News articles delivered to your email inbox. Learn more

Molycorp (NYSE:MCP)

With headquarters in Greenwood Village, Colorado, Molycorp claims to be one of the leading manufacturers of custom engineered rare earth and rare metal products in the world. The company produces materials from 13 different rare earths, plus yttrium, at a purity level of nearly 100 percent.

Currently, Molycorp is operating the Project Phoenix at its Mountain Pass site in California, which is a rare earth resource and production facility. The project, an expansion and modernization of the Mountain Pass mine, is intended to transform the asset into a technologically advanced rare earth production facility.

Ucore Rare Metals (TSXV:UCU)

Based in Canada, the company is in the development phase and focuses on rare metal resources with near-term production potential. Ucore owns multiple properties across North America, but its primary asset is its 100-percent-owned Bokan-Dotson Ridge Project in Alaska.

According to the company website, this property is rich in heavy rare earth elements, such as dysprosium, terbium and yttrium. It is the only rare earth element deposit in the world that has immediate deep-water access, and it also has the highest grade of NI 43-101-compliant heavy rare earth element resources in the world.

US Rare Earths (OTCBB:UREE)

The mineral exploration, mining and claims acquisition company is based in Plano, Texas, and was formerly known as Colorado Rare Earths. It has rare-earth mining properties in Colorado, Idaho and Montana, which together span more than 16,000 acres.

One of its assets, the Diamond Creek Project in Idaho, was recently evaluated for its estimated resources. Researchers found a number of individual rare earth elements present in notable quantities, including cerium, neodymium, lanthanum and yttrium.

Rare Element Resources (TSXV:RES)

Rare Elements Resources is a mineral resource company based in Lakewood, Colorado. Its main asset is the 100-percent-owned Bear Lodge Project located in Wyoming. According to the company website, this property has one of the largest disseminated rare earth element deposits in North America. Bear Lodge hosts both high-grade, light rare earth and heavy rare earth.

A 2012 study of the project determined its measured and indicated resources have increased by 65 percent since the previous year to reach 14.7 million tons at an average grade of 3.22 percent total rare earth oxides. Additionally, the inferred resource estimate rose to 31.4 million tons at 2.68 percent total rare earth oxides.

Texas Rare Earth Resources (OTCMKTS:TRER)

Based in El Paso, Texas Rare Earth’s flagship project is named Round Top. A preliminary economic assessment done in 2011 describes a tertiary rhyolite intrusion containing both heavy and light rare earth elements. Total rare earth element oxides (REO) are pegged at 299,500,000 kilograms of rare earth oxides graded 0.064 percent in the measured and indicated categories, with an inferred resource of 430,598,000 kg. The company announced a heap leach scoping study in July 2013 confirming recoveries of up to 79.9 percent.

Niocorp Developments Ltd. (TSXV:NB) 

Niocorp, formerly Quantum Rare Earth Developments Corp., is developing the Elk Creek Carbonatite, which according to Niocorp, is the only primary niobium deposit in the United States. While niobium is not a rare earth element, the deposit also contains a high-grade rare earth deposit 2.5 kilometers from the niobium deposit. Historic total rare earth oxide (TREO) intercepts include 54.9 m of 3.30 percent, contained in 155 m of 2.70 percent.

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THESE ARE THE KINDS OF MANUFACTURING JOBS OBAMA AND NEO-LIBERALS ARE PROMISING ALL WHILE TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT KILLS ALL OF OUR RIGHTS AND PROTECTIONS=====

UNIONS SAY THESE ARE JOBS----OH, REALLY?????


Remember when neo-liberals Obama and Congress stated they were 'forced' to extend Bush Tax Cuts that moved the tax rate on the rich to zero handing the rich a trillion dollars in tax savings-----because the Republicans threatened to block the Start Treaty with Russia? That treaty was never spoken of again and that trillion in tax cuts for the rich given by neo-liberals was then paid for by almost a trillion dollars cut from Medicare again, by Obama and Congressional neo-liberals. PLEASE STOP ALLOWING NEO-LIBERERALS TO RUN AS DEMOCRATS! Run labor and justice in all primaries.

Below you see another manufacturing job----the same as killed and disabled workers during Reagan's nuclear race.
  These neo-liberals and neo-cons are telling us that US citizens are now committed to what is best for US global corporations and that means wars, terrorism, and surveillance.  ACTUALLY, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE SAID 'NO' TO GLOBAL CORPORATIONS, they simply keep supporting and voting for their pols.



AND DEMOCRATIC VOTERS AND LABOR UNIONS KEEP SUPPORTING AND VOTING FOR THESE NEO-LIBERALS WHEN ALL THEY HAVE TO DO IS ENGAGE IN POLITICS AND RUN AGAINST THESE GLOBAL CORPORATE POLS.


U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGERSEPT. 21, 2014 New York Times


KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A sprawling new plant here in a former soybean field makes the mechanical guts of America’s atomic warheads. Bigger than the Pentagon, full of futuristic gear and thousands of workers, the plant, dedicated last month, modernizes the aging weapons that the United States can fire from missiles, bombers and submarines.

It is part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars.

This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for “a nuclear-free world” and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy. The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads.


Instead, because of political deals and geopolitical crises, the Obama administration is engaging in extensive atomic rebuilding while getting only modest arms reductions in return.

  Modernizing a Nuclear Arsenal

The government is upgrading major nuclear weapon plants and laboratories, which employ more than 40,000 people.

Nevada National Security Site

EMPLOYEES: 2,500

UPGRADES:

1 proposed

The National Criticality Experiments Research Center was built for $150 million.

Los Alamos National Laboratory

EMPLOYEES: 7,430

UPGRADES:

7 approved, 6 proposed

A plutonium processing site was recently renovated.

Kansas City Plant

EMPLOYEES: 2,730

The National Security Campus, recently completed for $700 million.

Y-12 National Security Complex

EMPLOYEES: 4,720

UPGRADES:

5 approved, 4 proposed

The complex’s Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility was built for $550 million.

NEV.  CALIF.   MO.  TENN.  S.C.   N.M.  TEX.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

EMPLOYEES: 5,250

UPGRADES:

2 approved, 6 more proposed

Sandia National Laboratories

EMPLOYEES: 9,880

UPGRADES:

3 approved,

9 proposed

A complex for testing weapons was recently rebuilt for $100 million.

Pantex Plant

EMPLOYEES: 3,180

UPGRADES:

3 approved, 10 proposed

The plant’s high-explosives pressing facility is being built for $145 million.

Savannah River Site

EMPLOYEES: 5,670

UPGRADES:

1 approved

The new Tritium Engineering Building was recently completed.

Sources: National Nuclear Security Administration, Government Accountability Office Supporters of arms control, as well as some of President Obama’s closest advisers, say their hopes for the president’s vision have turned to baffled disappointment as the modernization of nuclear capabilities has become an end unto itself.

“A lot of it is hard to explain,” said Sam Nunn, the former senator whose writings on nuclear disarmament deeply influenced Mr. Obama.
“The president’s vision was a significant change in direction. But the process has preserved the status quo.”

With Russia on the warpath, China pressing its own territorial claims and Pakistan expanding its arsenal, the overall chances for Mr. Obama’s legacy of disarmament look increasingly dim, analysts say. Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.

“The most fundamental game changer is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser in his first term and now a scholar at Harvard. “That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible.”

That suits hawks just fine. They see the investments as putting the United States in a stronger position if a new arms race breaks out. In fact, the renovated plants that Mr. Obama has approved for a smaller force of more precise, reliable weapons could, under a different president, let the arsenal expand rapidly.

Arms controllers say the White House has made some progress toward Mr. Obama’s broader agenda. Mr. Nunn credits the president with improving nuclear security around the globe, persuading other leaders to sweep up loose nuclear materials that terrorists could seize.

In the end, however, budget realities may do more than nuclear philosophies to curb the atomic upgrades. “There isn’t enough money,” said Jeffrey Lewis, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, an expert on the modernization effort. “You’re going to get a train wreck.”

While the Kansas City plant is considered a success — it opened ahead of schedule and under budget — other planned renovations are mired in delays and cost overruns. Even so, Congress can fight hard for projects that represent big-ticket items in important districts.

Skeptics say that the arsenal is already dependable and that the costly overhauls are aimed less at arms control than at seeking votes and attracting top talent, people who might otherwise gravitate to other fields.

But the Obama administration insists that the improvements to the nuclear arsenal are vital to making it smaller, more flexible and better able to fulfill Mr. Obama’s original vision.

Daniel B. Poneman, the departing deputy secretary of energy, whose department runs the complex, said, “The whole design of the modernization enables us to make reductions.”

A Farewell to Arms

Photo The new National Security Campus in Kansas City, Mo. Credit The Kansas City Star In the fall of 2008, as Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency, a coalition of peace groups sued to halt work on a replacement bomb plant in Kansas City. They cited the prospect of a new administration that might, as one litigant put it, kill the project in “a few months.”

The Kansas City plant, an initiative of the Bush years, seemed like a good target, since Mr. Obama had declared his support for nuclear disarmament.

The $700 million weapons plant survived. But in April 2009, the new president and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev, vowed to rapidly complete an arms treaty called New Start, and committed their nations “to achieving a nuclear-free world.”

Five days later, Mr. Obama spoke in Prague to a cheering throng, saying the United States had a moral responsibility to seek the “security of a world without nuclear weapons.”


“I’m not naïve,” he added. “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence.”

That October, the Nobel committee, citing his disarmament efforts, announced it would award Mr. Obama the Peace Prize.

Raise your hand if your are not naive enough to know Obama and neo-liberals never intended to negotiate a dismantling of nuclear arms----this is why Putin just walked away and now Ukraine is an issue.


The accord with Moscow was hammered out quickly. The countries agreed to cut strategic arms by roughly 30 percent — from 2,200 to 1,550 deployed weapons apiece — over seven years. It was a modest step. The Russian arsenal was already declining, and today has dropped below the agreed number, military experts say.

Even so, to win Senate approval of the treaty, Mr. Obama struck a deal with Republicans in 2010 that would set the country’s nuclear agenda for decades to come.

Republicans objected to the treaty unless the president agreed to an aggressive rehabilitation of American nuclear forces and manufacturing sites. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, led the opposition. He likened the bomb complex to a rundown garage — a description some in the administration considered accurate.

Under fire, the administration promised to add $14 billion over a decade for atomic renovations. Then Senator Kyl refused to conclude a deal.

Facing the possible defeat of his first major treaty, Mr. Obama and the floor manager for the effort, Senator John Kerry, now the secretary of state, set up a war room and made deals to widen Republican support. In late December, the five-week campaign paid off, although the 71-to-26 vote represented the smallest margin ever for the ratification of a nuclear pact between Washington and Moscow.

The Democrats were unanimous in favor, their ranks including six senators with atomic plants in their states. Among the Republicans joining the Democrats were Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, both of Tennessee and both strong backers of modernization. (“We’re glad to have the thousands of jobs,” Mr. Alexander said recently in announcing financing for a new plant.)



THE NEW YORK TIMES In open and classified reports to Congress, Mr. Obama laid out his atomic refurbishment plans, which the Congressional Budget Office now estimates will cost $355 billion dollars over the next decade. But that is just the start. The price tag will soar after 10 years as missiles, bombers and submarines made in the last century reach the end of their useful lives and replacements are built.

“That’s where all the big money is,” Ashton B. Carter, the former deputy secretary of defense, said last year. “By comparison, everything that we’re doing now is cheap.”

A Wave of Modernization

The money is flowing into a sprawling complex for making warheads that includes eight major plants and laboratories employing more than 40,000 people. Its oldest elements, some dating to 1943, have long struggled with fires, explosions and workplace injuries. This March, a concrete roof collapsed in Tennessee. More recently, chunks of ceiling clattered down a stairwell there, and employees were told to wear hard hats.

“It’s deplorable,” Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, said at an April hearing. Equipment, he added, “breaks down on a daily basis.”

In some ways, the challenge is similar to what Detroit’s auto industry faces: Does it make sense to pour money into old structures or build new ones that are more secure, are fully computerized and adhere to modern environmental standards?

And if the government chooses the latter course, how does it justify that investment if the president’s avowed policy is to wean the world off nuclear arms?

The old bomb plant in Kansas City embodies the dilemma. It was built in World War II to produce aircraft engines and went nuclear in 1949, making the mechanical and electrical parts for warheads.

But a river flooded it repeatedly, and in the past year it was gradually shut down. Today, visitors see tacky furniture, old machinery and floors caked with mud.

Its replacement, eight miles south, sits on higher ground. Its five buildings hold 2,700 employees — just like the old plant — but officials say it uses half the energy, saving about $150 million annually. Everything is bright and modern, from the sleek lobby and cafeteria to the fitness center. Clean rooms for delicate manufacturing have tighter dust standards than hospital operating rooms.

It is called the National Security Campus, evoking a college rather than a factory for weapons that can pound cities into radioactive dust.

Rick L. Lavelock, a senior plant manager, said during a tour in July that employees had a “very great sense of mission” in keeping the arsenal safe and reliable.

Photo Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Credit Albuquerque Journal, via Associated Press Continue reading the main story Their main job now is extending the life of a nearly 40-year-old submarine warhead called the W-76. Drawing on thousands of parts, they seek to make it last 60 years — three times as long as originally planned.

The warhead’s new guts, a colorful assortment of electronic and mechanical parts, lay alongside a shiny nose cone on a metal table outside an assembly hall.

The last stop on the tour was a giant storage room. Mr. Lavelock said it covered 60,000 square feet — bigger than a football field. Laughing, he likened it to the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” scene showing a vast federal warehouse that seemed to go on forever.

If the Kansas City plant is the crown jewel of the modernization effort, other projects are reminders of how many billions have yet to be spent, and how even facilities completed successfully can go awry.

At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, plans for a new complex to shape plutonium fuel emerged a decade ago with a $660 million price tag. But antinuclear groups kept publicizing embarrassing details, like the discovery of a geologic fault under the site. The estimated cost soared to $5.8 billion, and in 2012, the Obama administration suspended the project.



The Obama administration says it sees no contradiction between rebuilding the nation’s atomic complex and the president’s vow to make the world less dependent on nuclear arms.

“While we still have weapons, the most important thing is to make sure they are safe, secure and reliable,” said Mr. Poneman, the deputy energy secretary. The improvements, he said, have reassured allies. “It’s important to our extended deterrent,” he said, referring to the American nuclear umbrella over nations in Asia and the Middle East, which has instilled a sense of military security and kept many from building their own arsenals.

The administration has told the Pentagon to plan for 12 new missile submarines, up to 100 new bombers and 400 land-based missiles, either new or refurbished. Manufacturing costs for these forces, if approved, will peak between 2024 and 2029, according to a recent study by Dr. Lewis and colleagues at the Monterey Institute.

It estimated the total cost of the nuclear enterprise over the next three decades at roughly $900 billion to $1.1 trillion. Policy makers, the report said, “are only now beginning to appreciate the full scope of these procurement costs.”

Nonetheless, lobbying for the new forces is heating up, with military officials often eager to show off dilapidated gear. In April, a “60 Minutes” segment featured a tour of aging missile silos. Officials pointed out antiquated phones, broken doors, a missile damaged from water leaks and an old computer that relied on enormous diskettes.

The looming crackup between trillion-dollar plans and tight budgets is starting to get Washington’s attention. Modernization delays are multiplying and cost estimates are rising. Panels of experts are bluntly describing the current path as unacceptable.


See why neo-liberals are killing Medicare with Affordable Care Act and Social Security with myRA?  These Trusts are gutted!


A new generation of missiles, bombers and submarines “is unaffordable,” a bipartisan, independent panel commissioned by Congress and the Defense Department declared in July. Its 10 experts, including former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, echoed other estimates in putting the cost at up to $1 trillion.

The overall investment, the panel said, “would likely come at the expense of needed improvements in conventional forces.”

In August, the White House announced it was reviewing the atomic spending plans in preparation for next year’s budget request to Congress, which will set federal spending for 2016.

“This is Obama’s legacy budget,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s political delicacy. “It’s his last chance to make the hard choices and prioritize.”

Already, the administration has delayed plans for the Navy’s new submarines, the atomic certification of new bombers and a new generation of warheads meant to fit more than one delivery system. And debate is rising on whether to ax production of the air-launched cruise missile, a new nuclear weapon for bombers, its cost estimated at some $30 billion.

One of the most dramatic calls for reductions came from Chuck Hagel shortly before he became defense secretary last year. He signed a study, headed by retired Gen. James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that proposed cutting the nuclear arsenal to 900 warheads and eliminating most of the 3,500 weapons in storage. The nation’s military plan, the study concluded, “artificially sustains nuclear stockpiles that are much larger than required for deterrence today.”

In a speech in Berlin last year, the president said he would cut the arsenal to roughly 1,000 weapons — but only as part of a broader deal requiring Russian reductions. So far, the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has shown no interest, and Mr. Obama has made clear he will not cut weapons unilaterally. Unless either man changes his approach, the president’s legacy will be one of modest nuclear cuts and a significantly modernized atomic complex.

“I could imagine Putin might well decide it’s in his interest to seek more cuts,” said Rose Gottemoeller, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and the country’s top arms negotiator. “I don’t discard the notion we could do it again.”

Few of her colleagues are so optimistic. They predict that if Mr. Obama is to achieve the kind of vision he entered office with, he will have to act alone.




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September 22nd, 2014

9/22/2014

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I WILL SPEAK A FEW DAYS ON ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN THE US AND WORLD-WIDE.

New York was flooded with Climate Change marches with estimates of 400,000 people attending.  It is beautiful to see this activism.  This is my question----


WHY DO NONE OF THESE ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS IN MARYLAND TALK ABOUT TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT ENDING US ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS?


Below you see news on the largest world-wide march promoting addressing Climate Change. I read all of the media articles and went to Environmental group sites and not one mention of TPP in the US.This is why American citizens as a whole do not know what policies are being moved behind the scenes------our national justice groups are not educating the public.  National Resistance does a good job outing TPP and tying it to environmental devastation......let's take a look.  Keep in mind that Obama has spent his entire Presidency completing and pushing TPP and the neo-liberal Senate and neo-con House are already building TPP structures in their states as in Maryland. TPP seeks to allow global corporations to operate as they have in developing world nations only now in the developed world----ending US environmental laws and communities ability to decide what happens locally.  America will look like China----an environmental disaster----if TPP moves forward.

People's Climate March

3 hours ago

We made history and the world took notice.

Here's the #PeoplesClimate Mobilization on the front page of the New York Times, with 4 full color photos above the fold.

And they weren't alone. Here's the March on the front page of some of the world's biggest media outlets:

http://peoplesclimate.org/400000-strong-and-thats-not-counting-the-press-who-showed-up/


Thursday, 21 August 2014 18:36

New York Climate March Swells to Global Movement

Written by  Sophie Yeo | RTCC (350.org)

Plans are in motion for climate marches in Turkey, France, Bulgaria, Guyana, Brazil, Burundi and others, ahead of Ban Ki-moon’s climate summit this September. The original People’s Climate March, which will roll through New York as world leaders gather for the landmark conference, has swollen into a global movement, with over 30 events now scheduled to take place across six continents. 

Activists group 350.org, which is spearheading the action, has said it will be the largest climate action to date.

“People from across the planet will be making sure that leaders gathered in New York know the demand for action comes from every corner,” said Bill McKibben, co-founder of the group. “This is the first truly global problem, and it has spawned the first truly global movement”.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hosting the event alongside the UN General Assembly on 23 September to generate momentum ahead of an important international climate deal set to be signed in Paris 2015.


US President Barack Obama has said he will attend the summit, though leaders of some of the world’s largest economies have yet to confirm. Indian Prime Minister Modi appears likely to snub the event, while David Cameron’s presence remains uncertain.

Activists intend to use the event – and the momentary attention of the world’s media – to raise the volume around climate change, with around a million campaigners touted to descend upon New York on 21 September.

Actions planned include simultaneous climate marches in Rio de Janeiro, Seoul and Sydney – alongside a “silent climate parade” in the typically edgy Berlin.

Today, 350.org and its allies launched a website tracking the different movements and providing inspiration for organisers to launch further events.
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"The People's Climate March couldn't come at a more powerful time for the environmental movement," said John Coequyt, director of the Sierra Club's International Climate campaign.
"President Obama recently released a clean power plan that for the first time sets climate pollution limits for existing power plants and in 2015 we expect the United States to show leadership in setting ambitious international climate targets.
We will be able to let the president know on a grand scale that we expect to move towards a just society powered by clean energy. The theme for the UN Summit is 'Catalyze Action,' and that's exactly what we mean to do both in the US and around the world --momentum is on our side."

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If people do not understand why the US is in Afghanistan forever it is because of this nation's rare earth minerals.  Afghanistan has large deposits and as you see below---China is saying GET OUT to US operations that were involved in devastating strip mining.  Think of US computer corporations like Apple and Microsoft and how their factories were in China and think what will happen when they return to the US because developing world nations are kicking them out.  That is what TPP is all about-----creating in the US the same conditions for US corporations to operate with no environmental or labor restrictions.  Think mountain-top removal and fracking is crazy----wait until the mid-west goes from bread-basket to US manufacturing Chinese-style.  The water, the air, the products are all tainted with toxic pollution in China.  Not all of this is the fault of US corporations----but they taught the Chinese to do it.

'The change is visible in the supply warehouse here of one of the world’s few factories producing rare earth powders for use in very powerful magnets. Whether in smartphones or missiles, the most advanced applications for rare earths tend to involve the manufacture of miniature but crucial components using the powerful magnetic qualities of rare earths.

The rare earth complex here in Tianjin is owned by Molycorp, an American company, although the factory buys its processed rare earths almost entirely from Chinese refineries. The warehouse has neatly arranged stacks of barrels of rare earths. The bright blue barrels holding neodymium, another highly magnetic rare earth, are only two feet high and a little more than a foot in diameter, but weigh more than 550 pounds because of the material’s extraordinary density'.



Multinational Corporations Violating China's Environmental Laws and Regulations

WorldWatch Institute


Over the last three years, the Chinese government has punished 33 multinational corporations for violating the nation’s environmental laws and regulations, according to Ma Jun, director of the nongovernmental Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs. Ma’s announcement in September came as a surprise to many, as the Chinese public has tended to assume that multinational companies abide more strictly by the law than some in fact do in this heavily polluted country.

The exposed companies include subsidiaries of world-renowned corporations such as American Standard, Panasonic, Pepsi, Nestle, and 3M. They were punished mainly for discharges of substandard waste water and for unauthorized construction activities that occurred in the absence of proper environmental impact assessments.

When researchers at Ma’s institute began building a database to map China’s water pollution earlier this year, they used data from the websites of various Chinese environmental protection authorities. During the process, they came across a list of multinational corporations that had been cited for environmentally harmful activities for the years 2004–06.

Ma, who once worked as an environmental consultant for multinationals in China, was shocked by the discovery. “Those enterprises have been talking about corporate responsibility, yet they could not even abide by the law,” he says. “On the one hand, multinational corporations have not kept their environmental promise with respect to a global uniform standard; on the other hand, the implementation power of environmental laws and regulations in China is very weak.”

Mr. Zhao, an authority with the Jilin Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau agrees that, “Multinational corporations have relaxed their environmental standards in China.” And according to Lo Sze Ping, campaign director of Greenpeace China, the “words” of multinationals are often better than their deeds. To address their wrongdoings, companies are more willing to invest in public relations than in actually cleaning up the manufacturing process, he says.

What concerns environmentalists more, however, is the weak governmental and legal oversight of multinational corporations. Lo observes that as local governments seek to attract foreign investment, their affiliated environmental protection bureaus dare not take strict measures to address pollution by multinational corporations. He also believes that since multinational corporations typically perform better than domestic enterprises environmentally, the sub-par activities of foreign companies won’t attract the attention of the country’s top environmental authority, the State Environmental Protection Administration. This leaves a void in supervision.

But Lo also points out that domestic enterprises are more likely than multinationals to lack the capacity to meet environmental protection standards, while for the foreign firms it is more often a matter of willingness to address such problems. “Multinationals should be the ‘lead goat’ of their industries,” he says.

William Valentino, general manager for corporate communications for Bayer Corporation and the chair of the Corporate Social Responsibility Working Group of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, agrees that the poor environmental performance of domestic enterprises should not be used as an excuse for multinationals. “Talk about home electronic appliances, Chinese people will think of Sony; talk about soft drinks, they will think of Coca Cola. As an international enterprise trusted by the Chinese people, one is obliged to bear more responsibilities,” Valentino says.

Jianqiang Liu is a senior investigative journalist with China Southern Weekend.



Please visit this website to read the details----the point is that TPP will have all of these US corporations bringing their operations home along with the work and environmental conditions.  This is what Obama and neo-liberals mean by bringing manufacturing back to the US.  Your children and grandchildren will get to build Microsoft computers complete with the toxic exposures that kill Chinese workers.


Top 10 Corporate Criminals List


2014 Introduction

Many corporations are complicit in violating human rights and the environment. As the free trade market continues to push forward the global economy, holding corporations accountable for their poor practices becomes difficult. Unfortunately, corporations are working harder than ever to cover abuses instead of preventing them.

This does not have to be the reality. People can use their purchasing power to endorse Fair Trade and pressure companies and boycott those that violate human rights and the environment. In doing so there is potential to pressure these companies to put people ahead of profits.

Global Exchange has compiled a list of the top ten “most wanted” corporations of 2014 based on issues like unlivable working conditions, corporate seizures of indigenous lands, and contaminating the environment, just to name a few.

The Top Ten Corporate Criminals list is a guide to learn about what companies like Gap, PepsiCo, Carnival, and others you might have heard less about are doing to undermine human rights and the environment so that you can get informed and involved in combating the injustice. The more you know, the less corporations can continue to act unfavorably in the public eye. Share the list with friends, family, and co-workers. Click to the Take Action pages and email CEO’s, call executives directly, and network with other non-profit organizations doing work on the issue.

We at Global Exchange encourage you to exercise your right as a global citizen to promote social justice and defend the Earth.

See our Corporate Criminals alumni.





The List

1. Alpha Natural Resources for pollution of rivers, streams, and groundwater; violation of the Clean Water Act; destruction of forest and wildlife habitats; and devastation of Appalachian communities.

2. Bayer for manufacturing and using bee-killing pesticides, pinning the bee crisis on other causes, exposing farmers to harmful pesticides, and working to monopolize drug prices.

3. Carnival Corporation for dumping sewage pollution into oceans, use of cheap, air-polluting fuels, tax evasion, and unfair labor wages.

4. FIFA for forced evictions from homes and stores, damaging local business, tax evasion, labor abuse, corruption, and violating human rights including: right to adequate housing, right to free movement, right to work, right to protest, and right to labor protection.

5. Gap Inc. for refusal to sign “Accord of Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh,” refusal to compensate victims’ families, workers’ rights violations, and unsafe building conditions.

6. Ghirardelli Chocolate Company for refusal to use Fair Trade labor and continuing to support child labor, using labor that violates human rights standards, and creating environmental destruction and poverty.

7. Glencore Xstrata for dumping of toxic tailings, tax evasion, police brutality, destruction of communities, human rights violations, and environmental degradation.

8. HSBC for money laundering, financing conflict palm oil producers, and destruction of land.

9. Koch Industries thwarting public policy; forcing policies on funded politicians, judges, and organizations; working to destroy minimum wage, unions, and social security; re-segregation of public schools; toxic pollution.

10. PepsiCo for deforestation, destruction of peatlands, species extinction, greenhouse gas emissions, commodification of water, use of GMOs and prevention of labeling GMO foods, and privatization of public services.

Repeat Offender: Monsanto for harmful toxic chemical use, refusal to label product, monocropping, involvement in government, bankrupting small farms



Labor unions may hail the return of manufacturing to the US but the American people must balance the fact that these corporations intend to operate just as they did in China----minus labor and justice protections----minus labor wage and workplace laws-----and indeed, US workers will be on par with Chinese workers. 

THIS IS WHAT TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT DOES-----ELIMINATES ALL THE LABOR AND JUSTICE LAWS AND ALL OVERSIGHT AND PROTECTIONS OF HEALTH AND SAFETY.

Now, we can have manufacturing by regional corporations that want to adhere to our first world standards of life and work----WE DO NOT NEED GLOBAL CORPORATIONS MAKING THE US INTO CHINA!


That is what concerns me about national labor union leaders.  They are promoting neo-liberals and quietly embracing TPP because of the idea of MADE IN THE US----but they are not protecting their membership from what will be cruel and dangerous working conditions courtesy of TPP. 

WE CAN HAVE MANUFACTURING ON A LOCAL LEVEL WITH REGIONAL BUSINESSES ----WE DO NOT NEED TO GIVE IN TO US GLOBAL CORPORATIONS COMING BACK TO THE US!


Below you see Apple Computer's manufacturing FoxConn coming back to the US and it will bring these working conditions.....there is no corporation more polluting and brutal to labor than the tech industry.


'Rights groups like Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin and Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior say that Foxconn's stringent military-like culture is one of surveillance, obedience and not challenging authority. Workers are told obey or leave.

It's an oppressive culture that labor groups say contributed to a slew of suicides in 2010 at the company's Shenzhen plant -- prompting Foxconn to install nets in an effort to prevent employees from jumping'.


When labor unions support neo-liberals they are supporting bringing these manufacturing jobs back as they are in China.  THEY DO NOT  NEED TO DO THAT.  WE CAN HAVE DOMESTIC MANUFACTURING WITHOUT US GLOBAL CORPORATIONS!


Apple’s Chinese Suppliers in Trouble for Environmental Pollution

Tiffany Kaiser - August 5, 2013 5:16 PM



  (Source: nytimes.com) They’ve been accused of dumping too many chemicals into the nearby rivers

Apple’s suppliers in China are under the microscope once again, but not for employee working conditions -- rather, for environmental pollution.
 
Chinese electronics suppliers Foxconn Technology Group and UniMicron Technology Corp. have been criticized by Chinese environmental activist Ma Jun and five nonprofit environmental organizations for polluting nearby rivers with factory chemicals.
 
According to the environmental groups, water with a black-green color and a chemical odor have been dumped from both Foxconn and UniMicron plants into the Huangcangjing and Hanputang rivers -- which feed into the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers. “Sudsy” water is dumped from Foxconn twice a day.
 
Foxnonn is the maker of electronic connectors and circuit boards through a plating process while UniMicron makes printed circuit boards.
 
Foxconn said that it is complying with emissions standards and that other companies within the same industrial park are dumping water into the rivers as well. UniMicron also defended itself, saying that it checks wastewater daily and even installed monitors. It also hired a third party to inspect the water quarterly.
 
The groups pointed out that the dumping of polluted wastewater into the rivers is contributing the China’s heavy-metal pollution problem. Currently, about 25 to 60 million acres of China’s arable land is polluted with heavy metals due to electronics factories.
 
This certainly isn’t the first time Apple’s suppliers have been in trouble for environmental issues. Just earlier this month, Apple’s iPad mini and budget iPhone supplier Pegatron was criticized for various reasons, including improper disposal of waste leading to environmental concern, poor working conditions for employees, excessive hours, crowded living conditions, etc.
 
Before that, Foxconn was targeted heavily for many of the same issues as Pegatron. It even led to many employee suicides. Apple implemented a system of audits to deal with the conditions of supplier factories in China. It will likely do the same to address the environmental problems at Foxconn and UniMicron. 



Manufacturing Is Coming Back To The U.S. -- And Hiring

Dan Fastenberg Mar 20th 2013 7:28AM

Is American manufacturing poised for a comeback? The manufacturing industry lost 6 million jobs in the first decade of this century, but many experts say that the turnaround has already begun. According to one estimate by the Boston Consulting Group, as many as five million more positions could be recovered by 2020, due, in part, to Chinese labor becoming more expensive and less productive than the American workforce. (This figure includes service-related positions, like plant janitors and accountants.)

"There's a point when companies are indifferent to making things in the U.S.," Hal Sirkin, a senior partner with the Boston Consulting Group, says in an interview with AOL Jobs. And so they they decide there's no advantage in doing the work abroad. "We think that's 2015," Sirkin says. Search Jobs In


There are some caveats, of course. Many new manufacturing jobs don't pay the middle-class wages that they did when manufacturing was in its 20th century heyday; according to Reuters financial columnist Felix Salmon, some of these new positions pay as little as $13.50 an hour. Some of the best-paying positions require technical skills and training. But there is no doubt that manufacturing is on the upswing; if you want to zero in on the opportunities, here are the four sectors to explore, with links to some job openings.

1. Auto Industry

"Hiring now" is not a phrase that's often been connected with the auto industry in recent years. But the Ford Motor Co. says that it will invest $6.2 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the U.S., saving 3,240 jobs and adding another 12,000 positions.

General Motors, the country's largest automaker, announced in January that it will spend $600 million to expand an assembly plant near Kansas City, saving some 4,000 jobs. Chrysler, as well, has announced plans to add manufacturing jobs.



In his State of the Union address, President Obama hailed the return of manufacturing in the U.S. In doing so, he pointed to the success of renovating a closed warehouse in Youngstown, Ohio, into a new plant for creating 3D-printers. As CNET explains, additive manufacturing, another term for 3-D printing, allows for the creation an array of products, from chess sets to titanium parts for jet fighters -- from digital processes (as opposed to a classic machine work that utilizes raw materials). Training is required to manufacture the state-of-the-art printers.

Innovation is also at the heart of the return of plastics production in the U.S. Denver-based Intertech Plastics Inc. reshored manufacturing last year from Asia and Mexico, and new plants are focusing on so-called injection molding. That process features the heating of a variety of materials, ranging from hard metals to glasses, to improve household and industrial plastic goods. By moving manufacturing back to the U.S., Intertech has been able to increase sales from $20 million in 2011 to $40 million last year. Speaking to Plastics News, Intertech President Noel Ginsburg said that his clients particularly liked his company's "cradle to grave service," meaning that the entire production from design to shipping, takes place at the U.S. plant.

3. Computer Sector

After outsourcing production in China (and coming under fire for labor conditions), tech giant Apple announced in December that it will begin producing some Macs computers in the United States. Macs, however, comprise about a fifth of the company's total annual revenue, the rest of it coming from iPhones and iPads, which will continue to be made in China.

One Chinese computing company, Lenovo, however, has decided to move some of its operations to the U.S. In October, Lenovo, announced it will open a factory in North Carolina to produce laptops, PCs and tablets under its Think brand. Initially the factory will offer 115 jobs, according to Computerworld, an information technology magazine.

4. Appliance Makers

Another company that has begun slowly adding manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is the Whirlpool Corp. Last year, for the first time in six years, the company's KitchenAid hand mixers were produced in the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal. The first new plant, based in Ohio, is producing the plastic parts to accompany the motors that are still being produced in China. At first, the company brought on 25 new workers, but has announced plans to add even more workers to manufacture dryers, according to local Ohio news reports.

____________________________________________


The Sierra Club has done a great job nationally in getting the word out and gives a great overview of the environmental concerns.  I mentioned TPP to Maryland Sierra Club and got my terse reply-----WE WROTE AN OP-ED AGAINST TPP.  Well, the seriousness of this policy requires massive marches every day in every county in Maryland as Maryland is leading in implementing Trans Pacific Trade Pact and dismantling of the public justice system that would allow citizens to contest what will be devastating environmental conditions.  All of the Maryland Democratic and Republican Primary candidates EXCEPT Cindy Walsh support global markets and exporting----and will support US manufacturing coming back to Maryland to operate as they did in China.

WHY ARE MARYLAND ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS NOT LEADING MARCHES AND PROTESTS AGAINST TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT AND EDUCATING THE PUBLIC THAT TPP HAS A GOAL TO END ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS IN THE US!


Sierra Club
inTRoDuCTion


T
he Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade agreement being negotiated between twelve countries across the Pacific Rim, including Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. Eventually, every Pacific Rim nation may be included.

The Sierra Club is deeply concerned about both the process and the substance of the TPP. Our concerns include the lack of transparency in negotiations; a potential roll-back of the TPP environment chapter from past trade pacts; the expansion of natural gas exports, hydraulic fracturing, and use of coal; new rights to fossil fuel corporations; and new limits on climate and environmental regulations.

nEGoTiATED in SECRET

Despite the fact that the TPP would impact nearly every aspect of our lives and our environment, from the quality of our food, water, jobs, wages, and more, it has been negotiated behind closed doors with little meaningful public input or participation.After more than three years of negotiation, not a single word of draft text or U.S. government proposals has been released to the public. In fact, the full text of the TPP will likely not be made available until after President Obama has signed the agreement. Additionally, negotiators from the United States and other countries are forbidden to talk in specific about the negotiations, making meaningful public input and participation impossible.Despite the limited public input, a handful of non-corporate advisers and more than 600 business executives are actively involved in shaping TPP texts in their capacity as official trade advisors to the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Those worried about the climate implications of the TPP need look no further than the Energy Advisory Committee to the USTR, comprised predominantly of executives from the fossil fuel industry, including from Chevron, Halliburton, Nuclear Energy Institute, General-Electric Oil and Gas, Caterpillar, and other major fossil fuel corporations.

This heavy industry bias combined with a severe lack of transparency is deeply concerning.It is important to note that governments have negotiated the TPP with even less transparency than previous trade agreements. For example, a full draft of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement was released in 2001 and the World Trade Organization posts negotiating texts on its website. Particularly for an agreement as expansive as the TPP, the Sierra Club strongly opposes the lack of transparency in these talks.

THE EnviRonmEnT CHAPTER

One of the 29 TPP chapters is dedicated to the environment. We understand that the USTR has put forward an ambitious conservation proposal that would ban trade in illegally harvested timber and illegally taken wildlife, include disciplines on subsidies that contribute to overfishing, and include actions to deter shark-finning. The U.S. has advocated that the chapter be legally binding and subject to dispute settlement and include obligations for countries to uphold not only domestic environmental laws, but also commitments under agreed multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs).The fate of the environment chapter is unclear—all other TPP countries oppose elements of the U.S. proposal, including that the environment chapter be legally enforceable and include a list of MEAs. What is certain, however, is that while a strong environment chapter is critical, it is not at all sufficient to ensure the protection of our climate and our environment. As described in this brief, there are many TPP provisions outside the environment chapter that would have a negative impact on the environment, such as investment chapter provisions that empower the fossil fuel industry to attack climate policies and rules that would remove the ability of the U.S. government to even analyze the impacts of natural gas exports. Moreover, it is important to note that while the provisions of the environment chapter may be strong on paper, similar provisions in other trade pacts that allow one trading partner to challenge the environmental practices of another trading partner have never once been utilized. This is in stark contrast to the investment rules, and specifically the investor-state dispute settlement, which corporations have used to bring more than 500 cases against 95 governments.

It is therefore critical to look at and beyond the environmental chapter when analyzing the environmental impacts of the TPP.

moREnATuRAL GAS ExPoRTS, FRACkinG, AnD CoALThe TPP would lead to an expansion of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports without any review and without proper protections in place to help safeguard the American public and our global climate. In fact, if the TPP includes so-called “national treatment for trade in natural gas”—as we understand that it will—the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) would be legally bound to automatically approve all exports of U.S. LNG to countries in the agreement, including Japan, the world’s largest LNG importer, without any review, modifications, or delay. The origins of automatic exports of U.S. LNG date back to the U.S. Natural Gas Act. As amended in 1992, the Act stipulates that the DOE must approve permit applications to export natural gas to countries with which the United States has a free trade agreement requiring national treatment for trade in natural gas.

Importantly, if no free trade agreement is in place, the DOE must conduct a careful and public analysis to determine whether exports are inconsistent with the public interest before granting a license.

Automatic exports of U.S. LNG are particularly dangerous in the TPP. Japan, one of the TPP countries, is the largest LNG importer in the world, importing 4112.608 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2011.

And the fact that the TPP is a docking station for additional countries to join in the future means that the TPP creates an expanding web of countries with automatic access to gas from the United States. While language in the TPP could be drafted to protect the Department of Energy’s authority, our understanding is that no such language has even been proposed.Large-scale LNG exports, which the TPP would facilitate, would threaten our environment and climate in a number of ways, including: • increased unconventional Gas Production, including Fracking: Exporting natural gas stimulates increased gas production—most of which will come from unconventional gas sources, including hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” An intrusive procedure, fracking involves pumping millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals underground to create tremendous pressure which forces out natural gas. Unconventional gas production can emit large amounts of hazardous, smog-forming, and climate-altering pollutants into our air, and is a serious threat to our water supply. Unconventional gas production operations also have negative impacts on communities, forests, and parks. According to the expert Shale Gas Production Subcommittee of DOE’s Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, faulty and inadequate regulations mean that unconventional gas production comes with “a real risk of serious environmental consequences.”

Exacerbating Climate Change:

LNG itself is a carbon-intensive fuel,11 with life-cycle emissions significantly greater than that of natural gas. The energy needed to cool, liquefy, and store natural gas for overseas shipment makes LNG more energy- and greenhouse-gas-intensive than ordinary pipeline gas and even some fuel oils.

Opening our natural gas reserves to unlimited exports will therefore increase the world’s dependency on a fossil fuel with significant climate impacts. •

Locking in Fossil Fuel infrastructure and methane Emissions: LNG export requires a large new industrial infrastructure that includes a network of natural gas wells, terminals, liquefaction plants, pipelines, and compressors that all require thorough environmental review. For example, whether exporters are expanding old pipelines or building new ones, these construction projects can cut across private property and public land, further fragmenting landscapes and increasing pollution. There are also environmental impacts associated with the building of natural gas export terminals, which may require the dredging of sensitive estuaries to make room for massive LNG tankers. Expanding facilities and ship traffic will also take a toll on coastal communities and the environment. Additionally, natural gas production and infrastructure, including wells and pipelines, have 6been found to leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas that traps nearly 25 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.

Increased exports, therefore, will also likely drive increased methane emission and exacerbate climate change.• Shifting the Domestic Gas market Toward Coal: U.S. exports of natural gas would raise demand for U.S. natural gas, causing an increase in domestic gas prices. While the magnitude of the price increase will depend on the amount of gas exported and the elasticity of supply, a recent report commissioned by Dow Chemical estimates that natural gas prices in the U.S. could triple by 2030 under a high-export scenario.

Analysis also shows that the price increase in natural gas will shift the domestic gas market back toward coal.

As the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) notes, “the decrease in natural gas consumption is replaced with increased coal consumption.”

As a result, LNG exports likely increase CO2 emissions from U.S. power generation, according to the EIA. Despite all these impacts, the TPP would strip the ability of the United States to even examine whether exports are in the national interest, and cause the United States to forever cede its control over this natural resource.

nEW RiGHTSTo FoSSiL FuEL CoRPoRATionSTo CHALLEnGE CLimATE PoLiCiES

The investment chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement—one of three leaked TPP chapters—would give corporations expansive new rights, including the right to sue governments in non-transparent trade tribunals over public interest regulations that corporations allege reduce their expected profits. Using rules similar to those that included in the TPP, corporations such as ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, Chevron, and Occidental Oil have launched more than 514 known cases against 95 governments.

Among the harmful investment rules in the TPP are:• Definition of investment: The definition of investment in the TPP goes far beyond real property and capital investments, but includes, for example, the “expectation of gain or profit.”

This broad definition of investment opens governments up to a wide range of lawsuits not even related to actual investments.  7• minimum Standard of Treatment and Fair and Equitable Treatment: The TPP guarantees investors a “minimum standard of treatment” and “fair and equitable treatment” when they invest or plan to invest in a TPP country. These vaguely worded provisions, which have been included in previous trade and investment agreements, leave governments vulnerable to lawsuits from foreign corporations simply for introducing or amending laws and policies in their own countries.• indirect Expropriation: The TPP would protect foreign corporations from “indirect” expropriation, which can include any law or regulatory measure that merely reduces the value of a foreign firm’s future expected profits.


For example, a new regulation in the natural gas industry that reduces the profits of an investor, such as additional permit requirements, could be considered not only a violation of fair and equitable treatment described above, but also indirect expropriation.• investor-state Dispute Settlement: When a corporation believes its minimum standard of treatment or other rights have been violated, the investor-state dispute settlement allows it to sue a host country’s government in private trade tribunals. Not only do these tribunals give corporations the same legal standing as democratically elected governments, but they also lack transparency and public oversight.

Moreover, since there is no cap on the amount of damages a tribunal can award to a corporation, the mere threat of an investor-state suit can be enough to dissuade governments from enacting important public-protecting measures.These are not hypothetical dangers. In fact, current trends demonstrate that investor-state cases challenging public-interest regulations are quickly becoming the norm. Listed below are just a few investor-state suits that exemplify how investment rules can limit a government’s ability to enact climate change measures, protect the environment, and ensure the safety of its citizens.

Fracking in Quebec

In September 2013, Lone Pine Resources, a U.S. oil and gas firm, filed a lawsuit against Canada for U.S. $250 million under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The crime: A bill passed by Quebec’s National Assembly that instituted a moratorium on shale gas exploration and development, including fracking, under the St. Lawrence River.

According to Lone Pine representatives, the Quebec government acted “with no cognizable public purpose,” and violated the Enterprise’s “valuable right to mine for oil and gas under the St. Lawrence River,” despite the fact that the fracking process is known to contaminate drinking water, pollute the air, and cause earthquakes.

Lone Pine, however, argues that its loss of a “stable business and legal environment” violated its minimum standard of treatment and should be counted as expropriation.

Nuclear Energy in Germany

Following Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011, and in the midst of significant public pressure, the German parliament made a decision to phase out its nuclear power program and shift toward cleaner renewable energy sources. In response, Vattenfall, a Swedish energy firm with investments in German nuclear energy, filed a request for arbitration against Germany at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

Citing the fair and equitable treatment provisions of the Energy Charter Treaty—an EU trade and investment agreement for the energy sector—Vattenfall is now seeking U.S. $4.6 billion in damages from the German people for future losses that it may sustain during the nuclear phase-out.


Toxic Chemical Bans in Canada

In 1995, Canada banned the export of polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB, wastes to the United States. PCBs are a group of man-made chemicals that were found to pose serious risks to human health and the environment. In response to the ban, S.D. Myers, Inc., an Ohio-based corporation that processes and disposes of PCB waste, filed an investor-state claim against Canada under NAFTA, claiming violations to minimum standard of treatment, among other provisions. While Canada defended its measures as justified by environmental considerations—and despite the fact that Canada, as a signatory of Basel Convention, the multilateral environmental treaty on toxic-waste trade, was committed to banning the trade of toxics—the tribunal ruled in favor of SD Myers and ordered Canada to pay $5 million.26

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September 21st, 2014

9/21/2014

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BUILDING POLITICAL ACTION AND ENGAGEMENT IS LIKE GARDENING-------THIS FALL I PLANT NEW ADDITIONS TO THE GARDEN AND BUILD THE SOILS WITH MANURE, COMPOST, AND WINTER COVER SO THE SPRING WILL ALLOW THE GARDEN TO THRIVE.  PLEASE MAKE POLITICAL ACTIVISM AND REBUILDING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY YOUR NEW HOBBY AND BUILD THE FOUNDATION THIS FALL.

Today I want to talk about elections first locally with mine and then more broadly.  Remember, if WE THE PEOPLE cannot elect the legislators we want with the platforms we want----then we are not voting or citizens.  This is the condition in Maryland and I think in your neck of the woods with neo-cons and neo-liberals openly ignoring election law.

As I have shown from the beginning, Maryland law states that challenges to a Primary election for Governor of Maryland will be expedited as the election is still ongoing.  We are now at 60 days from filing and this case has not even received a scheduling hearing.  No communication from the court acknowledging the need to expedited tracking and no response from my motion a few weeks ago with 3 trial dates chosen by plaintiff and sent to court and defendants.  Those trial dates are now passed and Anthony Brown is in full swing as media identifies him as the Democratic candidate for Governor.  This case clearly shows the election is invalid and Brown is not the winner.  The court is failing in its duties not only to expedite----but to initiate scheduling hearings.  Below you see the breakdown for trial management and what are called TRACKS.  I show the two tracks my civil case would follow as 'expedited'.

This is all important because in Maryland the public has no justice system-----it has been totally dismantled.  A citizen having no public justice is sent to pro-bono private lawyers who then do not want to handle civil suits against government or officials.  Hence the massive fraud and corruption in Maryland's business and government sector.  The public literally has to self-represent to move forward any cases of government fraud and corruption and then these cases are ignored or delayed to such a degree as to show malice to due process protections.  IT IS DELIBERATE.

I will be moving forward with what is called a mandamus
requesting that a higher court make this lower court do its job in scheduling and upholding the expedited nature.  To do this I must pay more fees all while none of this should happen.  I will also be filing my complaint with the US Justice Department showing them the Federal Court case and asking them to investigate systemic election violations in Maryland's elections.  I am required to follow all these paths of relief before moving to Federal Court and then to the Supreme Court.

KEEP IN MIND THAT THE COURT IS CALLED UPON TO SHOW TOLERANCE AND AID TO PEOPLE SELF-REPRESENTING---THEY ARE NOT TO USE TACTICS THAT MAKE IT TOO HARD FOR PEOPLE TO SEEK JUSTICE.


The last article I show is a well-written complaint from an average middle-class Maryland citizen who by now is enraged that he has no avenue for justice.  He's not crazy or a hothead----he is not pressing a case that has no merit----he is doing just as I am-----seeking an avenue for justice from a plain case of fraud and corruption.  I have no detailed knowledge of his case but he is taking all the right paths to receive justice and he is being ignored.  His complaint is long but it highlights another very important issue for Maryland and especially Baltimore.  The rights of citizens to go to a Grand Jury to seek investigative relief when the Baltimore State's Attorney refuses to investigate and charge for fraud and corruption.  Remember, it is the City or County Attorney and the Maryland Attorney General that should be protecting against fraud and government corruption but these agencies do not even have white collar criminal units and no funding----they have no intention of finding government corruption.  That is what this gentleman is trying to do-----stating that citizens must have access to the Grand Jury in order to seek justice when the City Attorney or Attorney General refuses to uphold law.



It is Mr. Michel Pierson that is head of scheduling and case management.  I will first send a letter letting him know I feel I will need a mandamus in this case.


W. MICHEL PIERSON, Circuit Administrative Judge, Baltimore City Circuit Court, 8th Judicial Circuit, since December 1, 2013

Message from Judge In-Charge, 
Althea M. Handy


The Civil Division of the Court processes and manages all civil non-domestic matters within the Court's jurisdiction. It employs a differentiated case management system for the processing and tracking of all cases. A scheduling order, which establishes relevant procedural milestones and deadlines and pre-trial conference and trial dates, is generated for all cases that are expected to proceed to trial.


This is an ongoing election and from the start I have called for expedited track.  I issued a motion calling for suspension of discovery and arbitration to expedite the trial setting and this should place my case on Track 0 setting trial date from 31 to 91 days without having to go through mandamus------Maryland law already states this is expedited:

An Injunction occurs in expedited cases as we see below-----a preliminary injunction states that the election cannot move forward until this case is resolved.....the defendant Anthony Brown cannot advance as 'winner' until plaintiff receives justice in this case.  As we know he is moving forward and scheduling for the case has not happened.  It is the ongoing general election that the court is required to use as to decision to set the trial date at the earliest possible----31 days.  We are now at 60 days with no sign.  If the court waits for 90 days----the general election day is upon us.  So, it is clear the court should have Tracked this case as '0', placed an injunction on Brown from running until the court case is over, and set the date 31 days from filing or soon after.


There are two types of injunctions: a preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order (TRO).
The purpose of both is to maintain the status quo -- to insure a plaintiff that the defendant will not either make him or herself judgment-proof, or insolvent in some way, or to stop him or her from acting in a harmful way until further judicial proceedings are available. The court uses its discretionary power to balance the defendant's due process rights against the possibility of the defendant becoming judgment-proof, and the immediacy of the threat of harm to the plaintiff Courts can also issue preliminary injunctions to take effect immediately and effective until a decision is made on a permanent injunction, which can stay in effect indefinitely or until certain conditions are met. In many jurisdictions, plaintiffs demanding an injunction are required to post a bond

Civil Track 0 --No Discovery
TRACK 0:

District Court Appeals, Injunctions, Mechanic’s Liens, Restraining Orders, Administrative Appeals, Mandamus Cases, Declaratory Relief, Forfeiture (money or vehicles), Landlord and Tenant Jury Demands and Appeals, and Sale in Lieu of Partition (excluding divorce)


Mandamus is a judicial remedy in the form of an order from a superior court, to any government subordinate court, corporation, or public authority—to do (or forbear from doing) some specific act which that body is obliged under law to do (or refrain from doing)—and which is in the nature of public duty, and in certain cases one of a statutory duty. It cannot be issued to compel an authority to do something against statutory provision. For example, it cannot be used to force a lower court to reject or authorize applications that have been made, but if the court refuses to rule one way or the other then a mandamus can be used to order the court to rule on the applications.

Mandamus may be a command to do an administrative action or not to take a particular action, and it is supplemented by legal rights. In the American legal system it must be a judicially enforceable and legally protected right before one suffering a grievance can ask for a mandamus. A person can be said to be aggrieved only when he is denied a legal right by someone who has a legal duty to do something and abstains from doing it.


  1. Continuing Mandamus: A mandamus issued to a lower authority in general public interest asking the officer or the authority to perform its tasks expeditiously for an unstipulated period of time for preventing miscarriage of justice.[7]





Administrative Mandamus

MD Rules, Rule 7-401


RULE 7-401. GENERAL PROVISIONS
Currentness



(a) Applicability. The rules in this Chapter govern actions for judicial review of a quasi-judicial order or action of an administrative agency where review is not expressly authorized by law.


Committee note: A writ of mandamus is an appropriate remedy for review of a quasi-judicial order or action of an administrative agency only when no other right of appeal is provided by state or local law. See Heaps v. Cobb, 185 Md. 372 (1945). Ordinarily, administrative finality is required, but see Prince George's County v. Blumberg, 288 Md, 275 (1980) and Holiday Spas v. Montgomery County, 315 Md. 390 (1989).


Cross reference: For judicial review of an order or action of an administrative agency where judicial review is authorized by statute, see Title 7, Chapter 200 of these Rules.(b) Definition. As used in this Chapter, “administrative agency” means any agency, board, department, district, commission, authority, Commissioner, official, or other unit of the State or of a political subdivision of the State.Committee note: This Rule does not apply to writs of mandamus in aid of appellate jurisdiction.

Source: This Rule is new.CreditsAdopted Nov. 8, 2005, eff. Jan. 1, 2006.(C) 2014 Thomson Reuters. No Claim to Orig. US Gov.Works.MD Rules, Rule 7-401, MD R CIR CT Rule 7-401Current with amendments received through 2/1/14



MD Rules, Rule 7-402RULE 7-402. PROCEDURES
Currentness


(a) Complaint and Response.
An action for a writ of administrative mandamus is commenced by the filing of a complaint, the form, contents, and timing of which shall comply with Rules 7-202 and 7-203. A response to the filing of the complaint shall comply with the provisions of Rule 7-204.

(b) Stay.
The filing of the complaint does not stay the order or action of the administrative agency. The court may grant a stay in accordance with the provisions of Rule 7-205.

(c) Discovery. The court may permit discovery, in accordance with the provisions of Title 2, Chapter 400, that the court finds to be appropriate, but only in cases where the party challenging the agency action makes a strong showing of the existence of fraud or extreme circumstances that occurred outside the scope of the administrative record, and a remand to the agency is not a viable alternative.(d) Record. If a record exists, the record shall be filed in accordance with the provisions of Rule 7-206. If no record exists, the agency shall provide (1) a verified response that fully sets forth the grounds for its decision and (2) any written materials supporting the decision. The court may remand the matter to the agency for further supplementation of materials supporting the decision

e) Memoranda. Memoranda shall be filed in accordance with the provisions of Rule 7-207.

(f) Hearing.
The court may hold a hearing. If a hearing is held, additional evidence in support of or against the agency's decision is not allowed unless permitted by law.


Source:
This Rule is new.CreditsAdopted Nov. 8, 2005, eff. Jan. 1, 2006.(C) 2014 Thomson Reuters. No Claim to Orig. US Gov.Works.MD Rules, Rule 7-402, MD R CIR CT Rule 7-402Current with amendments received through 2/1/14



MD Rules, Rule 7-403RULE 7-403. DISPOSITION
Currentness
The court may issue an order denying the writ of mandamus, or may issue
the writ (1) remanding the case for further proceedings, or (2) reversing or modifying the decision if any substantial right of the plaintiff may have been prejudiced because a finding, conclusion, or decision of the agency:
(A) is unconstitutional,
(B) exceeds the statutory authority or jurisdiction of the agency,
(C) results from an unlawful procedure,
(D) is affected by any error of law,
(E) is unsupported by competent, material, and substantial evidence in light of the entire record as submitted,
(F) is arbitrary or capricious, or
(G) is an abuse of its discretion.

Source:
This Rule is new.CreditsAdopted Nov. 8, 2005, eff. Jan. 1, 2006.(C) 2014 Thomson Reuters. No Claim to Orig. US Gov.Works.MD Rules, Rule 7-403, MD R CIR CT Rule 7-403Current with amendments received through 2/1/14



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This court case highlights how Baltimore City closes every door to justice in cases of fraud and government corruption.  You see as well that a Maryland Assembly person and O'Malley recently passed law that made Baltimore City unique in the State of Maryland in that citizens cannot seek redress as readily with the Grand Jury as in all other Maryland counties.  Keep in mind the level of fraud and corruption in Baltimore is tops in the nation and so for the Maryland Assembly to pass a law making Baltimore unique in blocking citizens from using the Grand Jury for investigative relief must be unconstitutional and we hope this gentleman is heading for the State and Federal Supreme



On February 3, 2011, Maryland State Senator Lisa Gladden, who represents Maryland’s 41stDistrict in Baltimore City, submitted legislation to the Maryland General Assembly entitled Maryland Senate Bill 347, Baltimore City –Circuit Court –Grand Jury Investigation.



On April 6, 2011, Maryland Senate Bill 374 was passed by the General Assembly with a vote of 136-0. On May 10, 2011, Governor Martin O’Malley signed MD Senate Bill 374 into law with an enactment date of October 1, 2011.This action restricts the citizen’s right to bring allegations of criminal behavior to have been committed by elected and appointed officials of the City of Baltimore and is effectively being used to obstruct the proper amount of justice that citizens require when officials violate the public trust.



Pursuant to Maryland Rule of Civil Procedure 15-701, plaintiff Brian Charles Vaeth, appearing pro se before this court respectfully requests the Court’s intervention and hereby files this action to compel defendant to present allegations of criminal violations of law against Assistant Baltimore City Solicitor Sabrina Willis to the Grand Jury for an investigation. It is the allegation of plaintiff that Assistant Baltimore City Solicitor Sabrina Willis committed fraud, perjury, and obstruction of justice,among others,in a matter before the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.

[Summary of pleading]-


Due to defendant’s continued failure to act according to the aforementioned provisions of the Baltimore City Code and various Maryland Laws, plaintiff respectfully submits this request to compel the State’s Attorney to present the criminal allegations to a Grand Jury for a full investigation. To give a complete view of the culture of corruption in Baltimore City would far exceed the limits of mere “bullet points” and to trace the effects to their causes would be exhausting for everyone involved. If the volumes of complaints that have been filed against the City of Baltimore were used to gauge the sentiments of the complainants who have suffered serious injury under the arbitrary and capricious culture of the corruption that is the administration of Baltimore City, the sum of them may be demonstrated in the following statement, “No public official is above the law and as a consequence of participating in public corruption and abusing their positions of trust they should be subject to the same laws as the public.” Herein, are presented several propositions of fact and law upon which the court’s consideration can only help the cause of the citizens of Baltimore, to be protected from the unlawful acts alleged against the various elected and appointed officials now pending before you. The high offices of the accused, the manner in which these allegations are presented, the gravity of those allegations, and the importance of the questions presented for your review requires this manner of relief. Criminal misconduct by elected officials has become a recurring issue in Baltimore and the citizens, as well as municipal employees deserve and expect city officials to act in the public’s best interest. Yet contrary to this, we have been subjected to one story after another about corrupt officials using positions of influence to benefit only them, while diminishing the hard work of municipal employees that make substantial contributions to the public health and welfare of the City. There have been countless allegations of this sort of conduct being demonstrated in the media, on postings on the internet, and complaints filed before agencies charged with investigating them, yet these occurrences rarely get the level of attention that is required to uncover the criminal conduct involved. There is a culture of corruption that trumps the rights of the citizen in Baltimore and as a result it has shaken the public’s trust in those government officials.

DECLARATIONOF BRIAN VAETH IN RE TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER

On July 25, 2013, defendant was, and remains to this day, the State’s Attorney for Baltimore City.On July 25, 2013, plaintiff presented a criminal complaint, pursuant to the Maryland Rules of Procedure, alleging charges of perjury, fraud, and obstruction of justice against Assistant Baltimore City Solicitor of Baltimore City Sabrina Willis, to a magistrate for the court who is a commissioner for Pretrial Se
rvices of the Department of Corrections for Baltimore City and the State of Maryland That complaint is included herein, demonstrated as Exhibit 1, and plaintiff incorporates it in its entirety, as if fully set forth herein.Upon the filing of the complaint to the magistrate for the court, plaintiff was advised that the criminal information provided by plaintiff would be forwarded to the State’s Attorney for a determination regarding whether or not charges would be brought. Plaintiff received no response from the defendant.On September 21, 2013, plaintiff attempted to approach the foreman of the Grand Jury to present the aforementioned allegations of criminal conduct and to request the opportunity to address the remainder of the panel to obtain an indictment against the Assistant City Solicitor. Plaintiff, along with two other individuals who were there for the same purpose, were informed by a member of the Baltimore City Sheriff’s Office that they were in a restricted area of the building, despite any barrier or notice being in place to prohibit travel by the public in that part of the building, and they were instructed to contact the Honorable Marcella Holland, Administrative Judge for the Circuit Court for Baltimore City or they would be arrested.On September 21, 2013, plaintiff was advised by a staff member of Judge Holland that the only way that plaintiff could deliver the request to approach the Grand Jury would be via United States Postal Service.On September 22, 2013, plaintiff mailed the request to Judge Holland’s office, as instructed by her staff.On January 9, 2014, plaintiff attempted to ascertain the status of his request and was informed that the Honorable Judge retired from serving in the position of Administrative Judge for the Circuit Court of Baltimore City without taking any action on this request.It is plaintiff’s belief that due to defendant’s lack of action, abuse of power is demonstrated by defendant in that defendant institutes criminal prosecution against citizens of Baltimore City without cause and refuses to bring charges against certain government officials for violating the same laws. It is believed that Judge Holland’s failure to act on plaintiff’s request only furthers the defendant’s desire to obstruct justice when it comes to our elected and appointed officials to protect them and not the State, which is made up of the people and not exclusive to those officials.The arbitrary action of defendant prevents citizens from holding their elected and appointed officials accountable in the only manner that they have. MARYLAND SENATE BILL 347 (2011)On February 3, 2011, Maryland State Senator Lisa Gladden, who represents Maryland’s 41stDistrict in Baltimore City, submitted legislation to the Maryland General Assembly entitled Maryland Senate Bill 347, Baltimore City –Circuit Court –Grand Jury Investigation.A synopsis of the legislation is as follows:For the Purpose of altering the law relating to grand jury investigations in Baltimore City by requiring a grand jury to carry out an investigation if directed to by a judge of the circuit court instead of as directed by a judge of the circuit court; and providing for the application of this Act; and generally relating to a grand jury investigation in Baltimore City.Without an explanation, as to why this action before the Maryland General Assembly was necessary, the legislation and the proceedings during which it was enacted, makes it clear that the primary focus of Senate Bill 374 was to remove the rights of citizens to approach the Grand Jury to present criminal causes to them for an investigation.  On April 6, 2011, Maryland Senate Bill 374 was passed by the General Assembly with a vote of 136-0. On May 10, 2011, Governor Martin O’Malley signed MD Senate Bill 374 into law with an enactment date of October 1, 2011.This action restricts the citizen’s right to bring allegations of criminal behavior to have been committed by elected and appointed officials of the City of Baltimore and is effectively being used to obstruct the proper amount of justice that citizens require when officials violate the public trust.The State’s Attorneys of Maryland are constitutional officers. See Constitution of Maryland, Art. 5, § 7 (declaring that “[t]here shall be an Attorney for the State in each county and the City of Baltimore, to be styled ‘The State’s Attorney’”).In Murphy v. Yates, 276 Md. 475, 348 A.2d 837 (1975), the Court traced the origin and scope of the powers of the State’s Attorneys and concluded that they have had the constitutional duty since 1851 to prosecute and defend on the part of the State all cases in which the State may be interested, subject only to constitutional limitations. Id. at 485-86, 348 A.2d at 843 (citing Article 5, § 9 of the current Maryland Constitution and the 1851 Maryland Constitution).  This constitutional duty was derived from the common law and statutory powers and responsibilities formerly possessed by the Attorney General of Maryland. Id. at 491-92, 348 A.2d at 846. The powers of the State’s Attorneys are codified in Md. Code (1957, 2001 Repl. Vol., 2004 Cum. Supp.), Art. 10 § 34, which provides that the State’s Attorney shall “prosecute and defend, on the part of the State, all cases in which the State may be interested.” See id. at 487, 348 A.2d at 844.In Murphy, the Court held unconstitutional an act creating an office of Special Prosecutor because the General Assembly had no authority to reduce the constitutional powers of the State’s Attorneys and the Attorney General. Id. at 494-95, 348 A.2d at 848. In the wake of Murphy, Article 5, § 9 of the Constitution was amended to provide that “[t]he State’s Attorney shall perform such duties . . . as shall be prescribed by the General Assembly,” rather than “as prescribed by law.” See 1976 Md. Laws, Chap. 545; In reSpecial Investigation No. 244, 296 Md. 80, 87, 459 A.2d 1111, 1114 (1983). This amendment permitted the General Assembly to limit the powers of the State’s Attorneys. See Special Investigation No. 244, 296 Md. at 87, 459 A.2d at 1114 (stating that the amendment enabled the General Assembly to pass legislation creating the State Prosecutor).

State’s Attorneys have broad discretion to determine which criminal cases to prosecute. In Brack v. Wells, 184 Md. 86, 40 A.2d 319 (1944), the Court explained the discretion of the State’s Attorneys as follows:“By the Constitution of Maryland, Article 5, Section 9, the State’s Attorney shall perform such duties as may by law be prescribed. By section 33 of Article 10 of the Code, that officer is required to ‘prosecute and defend, onthe part of the State, all cases in which the State may be interested.’ In such prosecutions of persons accused of crime, he must exercise a sound discretion to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. He must be trusted with broad official discretion to institute and prosecute criminal causes, subject generally to judicial control. The office is one not purely ministerial, but involves the exercise of learning and discretion. As a general rule, whether the State’s Attorney does or does not institute a particular prosecution is a matter which rests in his discretion. Unless that discretion is grossly abused or such duty compelled by statute or there is a clear showing that such duty exists, mandamus will not lie.”In that action brought through the judicial process of Mandamus by William F. Brack against J. Bernard Wells, State's Attorney of Baltimore City, the plaintiff sought to compel the State's Attorney to present certain evidence to the grand jury. Generally, whether state's attorney does or does not institute a particular prosecution is a matter which rests in his discretion. Code 1939, art. 10, § 33; Const. art. 5, § 19. Mandamus does not lie to compel state's attorney to institute a particular prosecution unless discretion of state's attorney in such matter is grossly abused, or such duty is compelled by statute, or there is a clear showing that such duty exists. Code 1939, art. 10, § 33; Const. art. 5, § 9. The inquisitorial powers of the grand jury are broad, full and of a plenary character and are not limited to cases in which there has been a preliminary proceeding before a magistrate or to cases laid before them by the court or state's attorney, and the grand jury may investigate a case which state's attorney, in his discretion, has decided not to present to that body. Code 1939, art. 10, § 33; Const. art. 5, § 9.The Court further instructs that an individual who unsuccessfully had requested the state's attorney to present to grand jury a case involving alleged violation of criminal laws, and who also made a complaint before a magistrate and a warrant was refused, was entitled to an opportunity to present his complaint to the grand jury for whatever action that body desired to take. A citizen desiring to bring to grand jury's attention alleged violations of criminal laws should exhaust his remedy before the magistrate and state's attorney, and if relief cannot be had there, citizen then may ask foreman of grand jury for permission to appear before that body.By the Constitution of Maryland, Article 5, Section 9, the State's Attorney shall perform such duties as may be law be prescribed. By section 33 of Article 10 of the Code, that officer is required to “prosecute and defend, on the part of the State, all cases in which the State may be interested.” In such prosecutions of persons accused of crime, he must exercise a sound discretion to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. He must be trusted with broad official discretion to institute and prosecute criminal causes, subject generally to judicial control. The office is one not purely ministerial, but involves the exercise of learning and discretion 42 American Jurisprudence, p. 245. As a general rule, whether the State's Attorney does or does not institute a particular prosecution is a matter which rests in his discretion. Unless that discretion is grossly abused or such duty compelled by statute or there is a clear showing that such duty exists, mandamus will not lie. 38 Corpus Juris, p. 623; Boyne v. Ryan, 100 Cal. 265, 34 P. 707; McLaughlin v. Burroughs, 90 Mich. 311, 51 N.W. 283; State v. Talty, 166 Mo. 529, 66 S.W. 36.Maryland law dictates that the adequate remedy to which a plaintiff is entitled to is that of personally presenting his case to the grand jury of Baltimore City. Whether the plaintiff should without formality present himself at the door of the grand jury room and ask to state his case or whether he should communicate with the foreman of the grand jury and ask for an opportunity to appear before that body is not for this Court to say. The members of the grand jury in their oath prescribed by the common law, in addition to other things, swear that they will diligently inquire and true presentment make of all such matters and things as shall be given them in charge or shall otherwise come to their knowledge. The inquisitorial powers of the grand jury are not limited to cases in which there has been a preliminary proceeding before a magistrate nor to cases laid before them by the Court or State's Attorney. Whatever may be the duties and powers of that important body in other jurisdictions, in Maryland those inquisitorial powers are broad, full and of aplenary character. The Court, speaking through Judge McSherry in the case of Blaney v. State, 74 Md. 153, 156, 21 A. 547, 548, said: ‘However restricted the functions of grand juries may be elsewhere, we holdthat in this state they have plenary inquisitorial powers, and may lawfully themselves, and upon their own motion, originate charges against offenders, though no preliminary proceedings have been had before a magistrate, and though neither the court nor the state's attorney has laid the matter before them. The peace, the government, and the dignity of the state, the well-being of society, and the security of the individual demand that this ancient and important attribute of a grand jury should not be narrowed or interfered with when legitimately exerted.’ In that same case and at the same reference is contained a very pertinent quotation as to the duties of the grand jury in language which cannot be improved upon here: ‘To them is committed the preservation of the peace of the county; the care of bringing to light for examination, trial, and punishment, all violence, outrage, indecency, and terror; everything that may occasion danger, disturbance, or dismay to the citizen. They are watchmen, stationed by the laws to survey the conduct of their fellow-citizens, and inquire where and by whom public authority has been violated or the laws infringed.” These broad inquisitorial powers of the grand jury in this State have been further affirmed in many other cases among which are: In re Report of Grand Jury, 152 Md. 616, 621, 137 A. 370; Coblentz v. State, 164 Md. 558, 566, 166 A. 45, 88 A.L.R. 886; Hitzelberger v. State, 173 Md. 435, 440, 196 A.288.  Under these broad inquisitorial powers the grand jury may, of course, investigate a case which the State's Attorney, in his discretion, has decided not to present to that body. Upon the proper functioning of the grand jury the lives, security, and property of the people largely depend in the case of In re Lester, Mayor, 1886, 77 Ga. 143, at page 148: ‘It is the right of any citizen or any individual of lawful age to come forward and prosecute for offenses against the state, or when he does not wish to become the prosecutor, he may give information of the fact to the grand jury, or any member of the body, and in either case, it will become their duty to investigate the matter thus communicated to them, or made known to one of them, whose obligation it would be to lay his information before that body.’ And further in the case of State v. Stewart, 45 La.Ann. 1164, 14 So. at page 145, supra: ‘It is complained by the defendant that one S. A. Morgan, the leading state witness, went without summons or request before the grand jury, and gave his own version of the case against defendant, and instituted this prosecution. The witness had the undoubted right to go before the grand jury voluntarily, and disclose his knowledge of the case. As a good citizen, it was his duty to do so. No one can be excused for withholding knowledge of a crime from the public until he is summoned to give his testimony of its commission.’ Hott v. Yarborough, 112 Tex. 179, 245 S.W. 676, supra.  It seems, therefore, from the cases herein cited, which might not be all on that subject, that the right of a private person to appear before the grand jury to make a complaint has been affirmed in the states of Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, and Georgia and denied in the state of Pennsylvania and also denied in Tennessee where the witness was not under oath. The Illinois Court seems to hold that there is adequate remedy before a magistrate and redress must be first sought there. The Federal decisions are not controlling, as there is a Federal statute on the subject. The broad common law inquisitorial powers of the grand jury never have been curtailed by statute in this state but have been reaffirmed as set out in the opinion in other cases. This Court further said in the case of In re Report of Grand Jury, 152 Md. 616,at page 622, 137, A. 370, at page 372: ‘Presentments are accusations of crime made by the grand jury from their own knowledge or from evidence furnished them by witnesses or one or more of their members.’ If the presentation of cases before the grand jury in Baltimore City is controlled entirely by the State's attorney, the question naturally arises as to why there should be a grand jury at all.  It has been the custom in many of the counties of this State for private persons to make complaints to the grand juries. In this State no action has been taken to do away with that important body. The decisions of this Court that are aforementioned stresses the importance of that body.  STATEMENTIN SUPPORT OFISSUANCE OF A TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER Under Maryland Rule 15-501, Injunctions (General Provisions), a Temporary Restraining Order is defined as an injunction granted without opportunity for a full adversary hearing on the propriety of its issuance. This request seeks to restrain the obstruction of justice that is required and is long overdue, which has been withheld both willingly and knowingly by public officials and even officers of the court, in this matter. Plaintiff respectfully requests that this court issue a Temporary Restraining Order to enjoin defendant and other elected and appointed officials from obstructing the proper pursuit of justice of the citizens of Baltimore and that this action should be immediate, as it is in the public’s interest that their elected political and appointed officials be held accountable.Recognizing that the representative form of government is dependent on the trust of the people in their public officials, the Baltimore City Council enacted The Baltimore City Ethics Law (Article , Baltimore City Code) in 1985 because each citizen of Baltimore City has the right to be assured of the impartial and independent judgment of their public officials.As demonstrated in this pleading and is found throughout many other sources,it is apparent that the citizen cannot rely on the impartiality and independent judgment of these officials and when it rises to the level of allegations of criminal activity, actions like these are not only justified, they are necessary in assisting to meet the judiciary’s ultimate goal, which is to be viewed as being fair and impartial in an effort to promote the importance and integrity of the rule of law in our democratic society.Plaintiff has exhausted all remedies available for initiating criminal proceedings against the Assistant City Solicitor by petitioning a magistrate for Baltimore City, a court commissioner for the Department of Pretrial Services for the Maryland Department of Corrections, by submitting a criminal information report. This request was forwarded to defendant by the court commissioner for his decision. Defendant has not responded to this request. Respectfully Submitted,
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September 19th, 2014

9/19/2014

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Obama and neo-liberals are working as hard as they can to dismantle all oversight and accountability and privatize Medicare and Medicaid---MORE SO THEN NEO-CONS--- so any thought of stopping fraud is pure HOOOEY!!!!

CMS Calls Moratorium On Home Healthcare Agencies To Preempt Fraud And Abuse


Posted on Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 11:12AM | Douglas K. Rosenblum



Home health care agencies have existed for decades and most are honest and qualified.  What the Affordable Care Act does is deregulate and consolidate just as with the Wall Street banking industry and as with Wall Street the industry is now ready for soaring fraud and corruption in our Medicare and Medicaid Trusts.

THERE GOES YET ANOTHER TAXPAYER FUNDED----PUBLIC ASSET TO FRAUD.
Make no mistake---Medicare and Medicaid has been hit with $200-400 billion in fraud each year since Reagan/Clinton dismantled oversight and accountability but now hedge funds and global corporations are being tied to these home health industry and their sucking machines are on full force.  You see, they are in a race because Medicare Trust will be sucked dry in no time.  See why the Affordable Care Act builds private health systems designed to take seniors and the poor after Medicare and Medicaid is dismantled?


This is what our Dr Sharfstein and O'Malley have been doing in Maryland for Johns Hopkins and the health industry with Maryland's health care reform and it is why Maryland citizens were closed out and know nothing as to what is happening.  As with anything privatized and handed to these national corporations the level of care and qualifications are non-existent for most people using home health services.
The seniors still connected to Medicare and Medicare Advantage may be tracked into home care that works but remember, even you will not have Medicare as it has been very soon.  It is being dismantled.
All across the country this is what you are hearing----you won't hear it in Maryland because we have no public agencies looking for this.  You can bet the fraud, corruption, and dismal service is just as bad.


Home
Health Agencies Charged in Medicare Fraud
...
www.nationaljournal.com/healthcare/home-health-agencies...   CachedFeb 28, 2012 ·

A Dallas-area doctor and the owners of five home health care agencies were charged on Tuesday with $375 million in fraud against Medicare and Medicaid, the ...


Feds ban new home healthcare agencies in Miami to fight ...www.miamiherald.com/...ban-new-home-healthcare-agencies.html   CachedJul 26, 2013 ·

 Amid concern about rampant Medicare fraud, an unprecedented moratorium was imposed on new home healthcare agencies in Miami-Dade.


Seven Arrested, Charged with $22 Million Detroit-area Home ...www.justice.gov  › Briefing RoomJan 17, 2013 ·

 Seven Arrested, Charged with $22 Million Detroit-area Home Health Care Fraud Scheme. ... as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, and IRS-CI, ...

__________________________________________

As I have said earlier----when people like Sharfstein and his deputies in Health and Mental Hygiene are confronted with the need to stop fraud they say just what Johns Hopkins and Obama say-----THERE IS NO FRAUD.  The deregulation and dismantling of the public health structures guarantee Maryland health care will decline rapidly.


Maryland mirrors Texas in dismantling oversight and accountability and handing all business to global/national corporations which then feed on public money and individual's wealth.
  What Sharfstein did was decide which hedge funds and corporations were going to be hooked to the Medicare and Medicaid feeding trough......We have the Carlyle Hedge Fund with our Manor Care and defense industry corporations owning hospitals and profits are soaring. 

THIS IS WHAT THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT DOES----IT DISMANTLES OUR PUBLIC SECTOR HEALTH, CONSOLIDATES SO BIG PROFIT-DRIVEN CORPORATIONS CONTROL ALL HEALTH CARE IN YOUR STATE.


Think expanding Medicaid funding was for the good of the American people or with massive Medicaid fraud does it simply move more Federal money to global corporations through fraud and corruption?  THAT'S RIGHT-----

EXPANDED MEDICAID ONLY SENDS MORE FEDERAL MONEY TO BE FLEECED----IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PEOPLE ACTUALLY GETTING HEALTH CARE.!



Home health care firms breaking rules, raking in Medicare dollars

By TERRI LANGFORD, HOUSTON CHRONICLE | December 3, 2011 | Updated: December 3, 2011 10:11pm



 
More Information HOUSTON'S HOME HEALTH CARE TALLY

American taxpayers spend tens of millions of dollars on Medicare

$1.25 billion: Medicare money paid to Houston area agencies over four years.

$334 million: Amount paid in 2010.

468: Number of companies in Houston region.

129: Number of companies paid at least $1 million in 2010.

289: Number of companies receiving at least $1 million between 2007 and 2010.

Source: Chronicle analysis of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data

The nation's Medicare program has dished out $1.25 billion for home-based health care in Houston over four years - and yet nearly every agency that provides nurses, therapists and drugs for the elderly and disabled has violated state and federal standards, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found.

Still, little stops the flow of taxpayer dollars to the nearly 470 companies based in America's fourth largest city.

Dubbed "deficiencies" by the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, they include violations like failure to make sure drugs and treatments are administered properly and failure to report abuse of a patient.

Federal authorities say not only are companies falling short on certain standards of care, some also are bastions for potential fraud - its victims patients and taxpayers.

Though federal authorities declined to provide details, citing ongoing investigations, Assistant U.S. Attorney Justo Mendez told the Chronicle that some of the company billings in Houston are the result of "fraudsters" who "bill for services not rendered."

Earlier this year, Houston's Craig O'Connor was witness to the wiles of the industry.

His elderly mother, suffering from a poorly healed wound on her foot, was sent home from the hospital with a recommendation to use a home health care agency to help her recovery. Instead, he says his mother's convalescence was turned upside down as workers from the recommended company made a beeline to his mother's door.

"This was my first experience with Medicare, and I quickly became alarmed about all the doctors and health aides who were practically falling all over themselves to schedule house calls to see my mother," O'Connor recalled.

One of the "doctors" who showed up wasn't even really a doctor, he said.

Federal auditors repeatedly have noted the exploding and profitable growth of home health care in the Lone Star State, where Medicare spending has blown up to three times the national growth rate.

The Chronicle's examination of payment records showed that even in the tiny town of Edinburg in South Texas, 27 home health care agencies have received $331 million over the last four years.

Two months ago, a Chronicle investigation of the private ambulance business found millions in Medicare dollars spent on questionable transports of able-bodied patients to mental health clinics.

Booming business

Houston's Harris County leads the nation in the number of nonemergency ambulances, companies and Medicare billings with more than $62 million coming to some 400 companies in 2009 alone.

And yet, the home health care industry is even larger - and richer: $384 million was paid to 468 Houston companies in 2010.

Like private ambulances, no one state agency is charged with determining how much money is too much, or how many companies are too many. And Medicare's direct contact with the companies that bill the mammoth insurance agency for the elderly and disabled is minimal.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, delegates nearly all of its authority to contractors, a mix of private companies and state agencies. Those contractors, not the federal agency, decide what companies qualify for Medicare and pay the patients' bills.

'Termination track'

In Texas, it's the state Department of Aging and Disability Services, or DADS, that does the licensing, inspecting and investigating of home health agencies - a chore it is contracted to do for Medicare as well.

If the agency finds federal violations that endanger a patient's health, the report is sent to CMS and a "termination track" clock begins. The company has 90 days to correct the problems, with DADS in charge of checking back.

Through all of this, however, no one from the $760-billion CMS ever sets an eyeball on a home health agency in Houston, where 289 companies have collected $1 million or more from 2007 through 2010.

Last year, 129 companies hit the $1 million Medicare mark.

When asked exactly how many agencies in Texas with federal violations end up on Medicare's "termination" track, CMS' Dallas spokesman Bob Moos referred the question back to Texas authorities.

"We're not aware of any Texas home health care providers on a … termination track at the moment, but, frankly, DADS will have a better handle on this, since it's the one that actually does the inspections," Moos said.

Home health care agencies say they're being overly scrutinized because of fraud in the industry, with nearly every agency getting dinged for infractions that aren't that serious.

"I respect the home health industry's position on this, but we're not going to let up on them," said DADS Commissioner Chris Traylor. "Our job is to hold them accountable for any violations we find, and that won't be changing."

The hundreds of deficiencies run the gamut from the bureaucratic, like missing paperwork, to the problematic: not reporting within 24 hours knowledge of an act of abuse, neglect or exploitation by a worker; failing to make sure a patient's care plan is reviewed by doctors; nurses or therapy supervisors not making home visits when required; not checking properly for Medicare eligibility; and lacking written plans to control infection and disease.

But if no agency is about to be terminated and risk losing tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars in Medicare money, why have an inspection system?

"Our top priority is the health and safety of the clients," said DADS spokeswoman Cecilia Fedorov. "Our investigations focus on the quality of care provided and when we find that an agency is not in compliance with regulations, we require timely and appropriate corrections."

Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General reported that contractors charged with detecting fraud have had a series of problems that "affected their ability to identify potential fraud and abuse" and track the collection of overpayments.

Bad coordination?

"The government has enough information that they should be able to find this stuff. They ought to go look," said Rachel Hammon, director of clinical practice and regulatory affairs for the Texas Association of Home Care & Hospice. "I think the big problem I see is how the various government agencies coordinate. Each one says 'That's not what I do' or 'I'm not funded.' "

Some health care agencies counter that they're made scapegoats by the inspections as both state and federal agencies are pressured to do something about the nation's soaring Medicare bills.

'I go by the rules'

Edna Lewin, administrator of The Trend Health Care Services, says violations do not mean home health agencies or their workers are not safe.

The 32 "deficiencies" her company received in 2009 - the most by one company in Houston - were all corrected.

"You need to know the story," she said. "I live above-board. If I didn't, I wouldn't be in business."

Dorothy Smith, a registered nurse who created her Lanoitan Home Health Care of Texas in 1978, was cited for 21 deficiencies last year, all of which she says were corrected immediately.

"If you look at my record, it's superb," she said. "I think I'm getting the flak because there's so much fraud in home health care. I refuse to be a part of it. I'm old school. I go by the rules."

In 2009, the General Accountability Office reported Medicare's spending on home health care totaled $12.9 billion in 2006, up 44 percent in 2002.

It also zeroed in on several problems, some in Houston, including home health care agencies' propensity to overstate a patients' condition in order to get Medicare money. Nearly 700 patients deemed most severe "were served by potentially fraudulent (home health care)," the audit stated.

Federal officials in Houston also are investigating kickback schemes and billing for "services not rendered" but could not comment on specifics.

"Law enforcement's efforts alone will not stop this fraud," said Elvis McBride, who supervises the FBI's Health Care Fraud Task Force in Houston.
"It takes CMS or Medicare to put edits in place to prevent certain types of payouts. It takes education (for Medicare patients)."

Billing doubles


Even before Houston's explosive growth in home health care, federal auditors noted that not only had the number of people getting Medicare benefits doubled, but so did the number of times agencies billed for a visit to a patient: from 36 times to 73.

"I have a problem with the government not watching who is billing what," said Anita Bradberry, executive director of the Texas Association of Home Care & Hospice. "It's not that home health is bad. Home health is the solution to a lot of our health care problems."
______________________________________________

Johns Hopkins is of course leading in the Home Health Care Industry here in Baltimore and Maryland with headquarters conveniently located in a tax-free zone.  It not only has its own home health corporation-----it controls how money is dispersed to Medicare and Medicaid corporate non-profits----POWER TO THE CORPORATIONS!  So, who does Hopkins want to create start-ups that will then be allowed to fleece the system?

Keep in mind, neo-liberals are sending more Federal funding to Medicaid even as they dismantle and privatize Federal Medicare and Medicaid.  THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT IS ALL ABOUT PROTECTING THE HEALTH COVERAGE FOR THE POOR SAY NEO-LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS!  See why Republican states like Florida and Tennessee jumped for Medicaid expansion? Think of the number of baby boomers heading into this mess with health care deregulated and private corporations free to provide the least of care.

THIS IS WHY THE US SPENDS THE MOST ON HEALTH CARE WITH THE LEAST QUALITY------IT IS STOLEN.


This is what O'Malley, the Maryland Assembly, Baltimore City Hall are creating for you-----neo-cons and neo-liberals dismantling all that is public and handing it to global corporate profit!  Don't vote Republican----this is Republican policy!  In Maryland we have no Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation so Maryland wants all that money paid for licensing and then does not care what these businesses do.  That is why fraud and corruption places Maryland at the bottom nationally.

THIS IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SAME PEOPLE RIGGING MARYLAND ELECTIONS TO MAKE SURE THE SAME CROOKED POLS STAY IN OFFICE!


Neo-liberals are selling this as 'cost effective and best for the patient' to stay at home for care------but they have no intention of seeing people get quality home care----they simply want these people out of a profit-driven health industry.  If you can afford the gold and platinum plans or the ever-rising Medicare Supplement insurances you may avoid this but 80% of Americans are already slated for the Medicaid-level.

AND YET, LABOR AND JUSTICE LEADERS KEEP SUPPORTING NEO-LIBERALS EVERY ELECTION.
  TAKE BACK THE PEOPLE'S PARTY BY RUNNING AND VOTING FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE!


Blistering inspector general report says feds are failing to fight Medicaid home care fraud


IG has repeatedly warned Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services about personal services program for home care

By Joe Eatonemail 12:01 am, November 15, 2012 Updated: 12:19 pm, May 19, 2014 Jasmine Norwood/

The Center for Public Integrity

  Like a growing number of disabled Americans on Medicaid, Keith Foreman, a 57-year-old in Metropolis, Ill., qualified for a personal caregiver to help him with daily activities like dressing, shaving, and preparing meals.

Foreman, who prosecutors say suffers from a spinal injury, hired his girlfriend, Sheila McDonald, for the job. In 2011, McDonald received almost $5,000 from Medicaid for six months of care she provided to Foreman.

These personal care services, which are available in all 50 states, are designed to help the sick, elderly, and disabled remain in their homes — and out of expensive nursing facilities. But Foreman was not living at home. During the days marked on McDonald’s timesheets, Foreman was housed in the Massac County jail in Illinois, serving time for forging a stolen debit card signature at a local liquor store.

Like Foreman and McDonald, who both pleaded guilty to charges of making false statements, unscrupulous beneficiaries and home health workers are increasingly targeting personal care services programs for illegal money-making schemes, according to a new federal report. Investigators say lax requirements for both caregivers and patients, along with poor state and federal oversight, has made the rapidly growing programs a lucrative target for fraud.  And this isn’t the first time they’ve issued such a warning.

Report faults federal oversight of state programs A Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report scheduled to be released today faults the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) for inadequate oversight of personal care services programs, whose costs are shared by states and the federal government, as is the norm for Medicaid.  The report, which brings together six years of OIG investigations and 23 reports on the topic, describes a program hindered by poor claims documentation, insufficient monitoring of claims data for fraud and waste, and a crazy-quilt of varied requirements for personal care workers in different states.

“Historically, CMS has left a lot of the responsibility for overseeing waste, fraud and abuse to the states,” said Christi Grimm, special assistant to the principal deputy inspector general. “As a result, we have 301 different sets of requirements for caregivers across the states.” 

Although some states mandate criminal background checks and licensing for home health workers, Grimm said others lack even the most basic requirements, including age minimums, which has led to cases in which juveniles escape prosecution for fraud and abuse. Worker requirements are set by counties in a number of states, she added, which has led to a hodge-podge of rules that are difficult to enforce, and nearly impossible to monitor.


“We are asking CMS to step up to the plate,” Grimm said, and use its authority to regulate and monitor the state programs.

The report includes six previous OIG recommendations to CMS and state agencies which have gone unimplemented. In a 2008 report that found five states may have paid up to $11 million in error for personal care services during one quarter of 2005, OIG recommended that the CMS work with states to stop payments for personal care when patients were receiving care in institutions, not at home. The agency agreed with the recommendation, but according to the OIG, the work has not been completed.

In addition to asking the agency to address previous recommendations, the report offers four new goals for CMS to improve oversight and monitoring of state plans, including standardizing rules for personal care workers to set minimum age and education levels, and require criminal background checks.

The report, however, seems unlikely to spur the agency to follow the OIG’s specific suggestions..  In a written response, CMS — part of the Department of Health and Human Services — explicitly concurred with only one of  the OIG recommendations: that it should provide states with claims data to help root out cases in which beneficiaries are simultaneously receiving both institutional care and home health services.  In response to the recommendation on establishing federal guidelines for personal care workers, CMS pointed out there is a shortage of care attendants.

 “Personal care services are an important part of keeping people in their homes and out of nursing homes, which lowers costs and improves the quality of life of the patient,”
said CMS spokesman Brian Cook. “We are working to protect personal care from fraud and abuse by promoting stronger training programs for workers who provide personal care, working with states on background check programs for these workers, and developing new data methods to analyze claims for potential fraud and abuse."

Grimm called the CMS response to the report unacceptable. “It’s not uncommon for CMS … to identify things on the horizon, or things they hope to do, but not necessarily commit to doing something,” Grimm said, adding that CMS’s efforts so far simply have not worked. “[CMS] has the authority to do what we are asking. It has not done it yet. And it hasn’t committed to doing it after reading our report.”

A wealth of opportunities

According to investigators, most fraud schemes in personal care services involve billing for care that was not provided or was not allowed. Self-directed programs, which allow beneficiaries to hire and manage their helpers, may be particularly vulnerable, but some prosecutions have also involved home health care agencies.

In January, for example, the owner of a Minnesota home health care company outside Minneapolis was sentenced to two years in prison for cheating Medicaid out of more than $650,000 in charges for personal care services. In March, the owner of Families First Home Health Care in Sparta, N.C., pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering stemming from a scheme in which she billed Medicaid for personal care services she did not perform and split the proceeds with plan members.

“Fraud goes where the money is,”
said Barbara Zelner, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Fraud Units, which represents state law enforcement agencies that investigate Medicaid fraud.  After nursing homes, Zelner said, home health represents one of the larger slices of state Medicaid budgets.

Personal care services programs have grown quickly since a 1999 Supreme Court decision held that unjustified segregation of the disabled is a civil rights violation. The ruling led to increased spending for home health services; in 2011, Medicaid paid more than $12 billion for personal care services, up 35 percent since 2005, according to the OIG. Investigators say program fraud has kept pace. In 2010, state Medicaid fraud units investigated more than 1,000 cases involving personal care services, more than any other type of Medicaid service.

Not everyone agrees with the OIG’s views on personal care services.  In 2011, an OIG review of Medicaid claims for personal care services in New Jersey found that 40 percent should have been denied. Sherl Brand, president of the Home Care Association of New Jersey, which advocates for home health care providers, questions the OIG’s work, saying the agency often draw broad conclusions from examinations of a limited number of claims. “It is almost a bit ridiculous because of the extrapolation they do,” Brand said.

New Jersey home health workers face criminal background checks and certification and licensure requirements, Brand said. Personal care services programs save money, she said, in addition to helping disabled people live better lives. When New Jersey was faced with budget cuts, Brand said the association determined the average weekly cost for personal care services was $242 dollars a week, only slightly higher than the cost of a single day in a nursing home.

But as funding for the programs increase, fraud follows. Kirk Ogrosky, a former top federal health care fraud prosecutor who is now a partner at the Washington law firm Arnold & Porter, said home health has long been a hotbed of fraud, both in Medicaid and in Medicare. The fraud, he said, is not hard to uncover. Ogrosky recalled that after an extensive analysis of Medicare claims, he sent agents out to interview questionable beneficiaries. When the agents knocked on the doors, they often learned the person they were looking for was at work, Ogrosky recalled.  “That’s utterly preposterous,” he said, “since home health requires that you are homebound.”

In other cases, Ogrosky said, agents found that home health care agencies were filing claims for beneficiaries who did not live at the homes indicated on the claims. “One of my favorite stories is about a homeless guy we found,” Ogrosky said. “He didn’t even have a home to be homebound to.”

___________________________________________

Maryland is ground zero for what will be a home health industry mirroring the subprime mortgage corruption of the housing industry.  There are so many home health care companies------all with a level of administration-----medical supplies------for-profit career education------and much of it is paid for from Federal/state taxpayer education funding and/or Medicare and Medicaid Trust money.  We are being fleeced of education money for these career centers that are a dime a dozen in Maryland all funded with 'higher education' money.  Doctors used to train their own receptionists, medical aids, file clerks but now there is a career training for that.  Think of the level of education funds going to this home health care industry----all paid with 'higher education funding'----and sending people off with a level of training that allows them no ability to meet the needs of most health consumers.  These home health workers will tell you they do not even have a nurse to call for help because that is all hype----one nurse shared between several different home health agencies

-----ALL HAPPENING BECAUSE PUBLIC HEALTH IS NOW A CHEAP-FOR-PROFIT BUSINESSES.


State nursing homes centralize all of this at such a level of cost less than what this outsourcing filled with fraud is creating.  The staff was professional and patients had the benefit of other people around them.  What happened in Maryland is state nursing homes were defunded and allowed to become bad environments. 

IT WAS THE DEFUNDING THAT MADE PUBLIC NURSING HOMES UNINVITING FOR PEOPLE----NOT THE PUBLIC STRUCTURE.


So, neo-liberals and neo-cons are doing to health care what has happened in the financial services industry-----hundreds of different kinds of banking all geared to fleece you.


Keep in mind that many seniors are navigating all of this on their own and many are not good advocates for themselves----which neo-liberals know.  So, there is so much abuse and neglect

THAT EVERYONE KNOWS WOULD HAPPEN WITH THIS KIND OF HEALTH STRUCTURE!  IT IS RIDICULOUS!


Dealing with a loved one with health challenges while fighting a system as corrupt as banks-----yeah----that's what the American people want.
The more you know your rights as you see below---the faster they will hit and run.  All of this so corporate pols do not have to send taxpayer money to support public nursing homes. Note this complaint below is from our good old neo-liberal Senate Leader Harry Reid's state of Nevada


Complaint Review: INTEGRITY HOME HEALTH CARE



If you are considering a quality ethical and caring Home Health Company DO NOT choose this company. The staff provided appear to be of good quality but the office staff is the worst most corrupt and incompetent types you'll ever find.

Don't be fooled by that sales technique the Community Liason Jay Heiseler tells about the owner Alysa Sigmund who he claims lost her father due to very poor, uncompassionate and inadequate care provided her father via a certain Home Health and later Hospice Care.

He claims it was this experience that inspired Alysa Sigmund (Owner/Administrator) to create her own quality Home Health Company. Jay also likes to tell stories about how Integrity Home Health Office Staff GO ABOVE & BEYOND for their clients that all they do is Client Oriented and they are aware of HOW MUCH MONEY they are paid from Medicare/Medicaid and are mindful of providing the Absolute Maximum Services they can provide for the client considering that budget EVEN IF THEY MAKE VERY LITTLE PROFIT.

Mr. Jay even states they will advocate and fight the insurance companies for coverage or extended coverage and aren't afraid of submitting Prior Authorizations requests to Secondary Insurance like Nevada Medicaid to make it happen, because again they CARE ONLY ABOUT THEIR CLIENTS NEEDS.


Well here's my experience with these people having acted as representative for an elderly bed confined family member with multiple conditions that used their service. Alysa Sigmund is a cold hearted individual whose ONLY CONCERN IS TO MAKE MONEY.

Speaking to this lady you quickly find that she sounds more like a witch rather than an angel and that Mr. Heiseler story is probably a convenient lie and ploy to trap people into trying this lousy service.

In this case despite there is No Mandate by Medicare & Medicaid to obtain a copy of the Power Of Attorney from the representative(s) for Home Health Services to continue when there exists Doctors Orders that the patients requires them this woman Alysa Sigmund constantly harasses and begins to threaten discharge or reduction of services that are NOT ACCORDING TO MEDICARE/MEDICAID GUIDELINES or anything that would indicate NON COVERAGE.


In our case the client was under the care of FAMILY CAREGIVERS where a Next Of Kin was present. A Power Of Attorney does in fact exist but is kept at a safety deposit box at a local bank and considering the patients needs are 24/7 made it inconvenient to go retrieve it just to give a copy to this hateful individual.

Anyone that has any understanding of HIPAA should know there are alternative ways of establishing credentials or authority to discuss or direct care of an incapacitated individual especially in the case of a family member and next of kin at that.


Furthermore my loved one was with this agency probably 4 weeks during which times certain promises by Jay and the Nursing Supervisor as to the amount of coverage for her care by an RN were NOT PROVIDED.

She had been discharged from her last hospital stay requiring MULTIPLE SKILLED FUNCTIONS to be performed by a RN such as IV Infusion Antibiotics, Care of a Picc Line, Nephrostomy Bag and its care, Foley Catheter, Tube Feedings, multiple skilled dressing changes including wound care (skin breakdown/sores) o2 monitoring/bipap administration, blood thinning by injection, just to name a few.

The so called promises that an "RN would be staffed EVERY DAY for the First Week" DIDNOT HAPPEN. Alysa was attempting to deny a CNA on the pre-tenses of a a family member serving as PCA which is ERRONEOUS & PURPOSEFUL TACTIC utilized to pocket a greater Share of the Medicare/Medicaid moneys.

Medicare is the Primary Payer and Medicaid Secondary Payer, Medicare covers FIRST the Maximum number of Home health Aide (CNA) visits the patient requires per Doctor orders in conjunction with Family Cargiver input and THEN MEDICAID COVERS ADDITIONAL TASKS BY AWARDING TIMES TO THE PCA.

In the case of a bed bound individual who is incontinent for both bladder and bowel a patient may need to undergo MORE than 2 Bed Baths per day and there is NO "Duplication Of Services" BECAUSE THE PATIENT REQUIRES THE INCREASED AMOUNT OF CARE.
People who have common sense or any remote medical training and been exposed to the realities of the bed bound patient who are prone to skin breakdowns due to the chemical reaction of stool plus urine touching the skin for extended periods of times know what I'm talking about here.

In addition Alysa Sigmund was attempting to DENY all Therapy Services such Physical Therapist, Occupational Therapist and ultimately only provided 2 visits from a PT. Mrs. Alysa Sigmund stated that in the case of a bed confined contracted individual MEDICARE DOESNOT PAY FOR THERAPY SERVICES because "IT WOULD BE A WASTE, SOMEONE LIKE THAT WON'T IMPROVE AND WE NEED TO DOCUMENT MARKED IMPROVEMENT."

Speaking to anyone who has done their own research on this subject you will find a wealth of information available through the Centers For Medicare & Medicaid website that gives you access to PUBLIC INFORMATION such as the Medicare Manuals and CODIFICATIONS OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS in addition to Medicaid State Plans, and approved Medicaid Waivers.
DONOT be fooled by these unethical companies who are only in the business to MAKE MONEY who attempt to Defraud and Insult your intelligence with Absurd Falsities as to Medicare/Medicaid Insurance Coverages.

Alot of these companies operate under the "PLATEAU MYTH" principle that is to say they claim that Medicare/Medicaid will ONLY pay for Physical & Occupational Therapy only when DRAMATIC/MARKED IMPROVEMENT can be documented objectively on paper.

However, reading the Medicare Regulation Manuals regarding Home Health will reveal to you
that Medicare DOES IN FACT pay for Therapist involvement to formulate and administer a "MAINTENANCE PROGRAM" designed to PREVENT FURTHER DETERIORATION AND TO AVOID THE LOSS OF ANY IMPROVEMENT GAINED VIA THERAPY INTERVENTIONS.

The CFR specifically mandate the PT & OT to stay on the case to REGULARLY MONITOR the condition of the patient to ENSURE that those Family Caregivers they have trained to provide Therapy/Range Of Motions on behalf of the patient are AVOIDING any Further Deterioration to their Limbs and ACTUALLY SUSTAIN ANY IMPROVEMENTS in RANGE OF MOTION ACHIEVED.

Also keep in mind that per the Medicare Regulations Local and National Coverage Determinations and the CODIFICATION OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS MULTIPLE PHYSICIANS can order Therapy based on Multiple Reasonings or Conditions and the Therapy Services can be provided by more than one company and or combination of Therapists EVEN CON-CURRENTLY.

Ultimately what happened is that Alysa Sigmund DUMPED my loved one WITHOUT ANY HOME HEALTH COVRAGE and WITHOUT NOTIFYING HER PHYSICIAN and to us she committed a most DESPICABLE and UNETHICAL ACTION and that was the issuance of a Home Health Advance Beneficiary Notice that stated they were REDUCING or or Discontinuing Skilled Nursing, Phyisical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Home Health Aide, Medical Social Services with the reason:
"Non Compliance With Medicare Rules" containing 3 other suggested Home Health Companies and in ADDITION a "Notice Of Medicare Provider Non-Coverage" which were BOTH DATED THE EXACT SAME DAY as the Hand delivery by the assigned RN Nurse!

Anyone that is familiar with BIPA legislation (Benefit Improvement Protection Act) knows that the Home Health Company is mandated to provide the Notice(s) 48 HOURS BEFOR THE EFFECTIVE DATE. This allows you to request a Fast Track Appeal through the QIO whose deadline is 12:00 Noon on the DAY BEFORE THE EFFECTIVE DATE. I have not even mentioned the various violatons committed against ADA, Olmstead and Nevada Revised Statutes concerning quality medical care by such organizations as a HOME HEALTH.

In other words this was a conspiratorial and PRE-MEDITATED evil act to NOT only Discharge the Client but to attempt to REMOVE ANY APPEAL RIGHTS. I did contact the QIO on the Exact Same Day and the Home Health Company subsequently FAILED after being contacted by QIO to provide the MANDATORY "DETAILED NOTICE" by the END OF THAT BUSINESS DAY.

We are therefore taking steps to submit reviews Online for all those diligent researchers who are looknig for a Home Health Company for themselves or a loved one so they can know what type of Company this really is because "INTEGRITY" they DONOT HAVE. We are also filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, The Bureau Of Licensure & Certification, Medicare, CMS, Regional Home Health Intermediary and may contemplate civil actions.

Zealouswhistleblower
Las Vegas, Nevada
U.S.A.



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

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