Maryland's political reporting is basically repeating what a two party captured system says----no holding power accountable--no outing pols as posing progressive or conservative but below we see an article written that actually addresses a REAL ISSUE. We spoke a few days ago about the march to deregulate and dismantle all our public K-12 structures under the guise of fixing long-standing neglect of oversight and accountability. With that comes the move to capture all public K-12 policy to yet another quasi-governmental appointed committee/commission. They people who will be appointed will be those having allowed widespread misappropriation of our Maryland and Baltimore education funds no doubt.
Clinton/Bush/Obama terms were an exercise in moving the power of legislation from our elected Congress, state assemblies, and city halls to the EXECUTIVE BRANCH----PRESIDENT, GOVERNOR, MAYOR----by what we describe above---but also we see below--the executive order. Presidents have illegally used this process and now it is coming more and more to our state and local executives. The idea that starting our K-12 before or after Labor Day is so critical as to come to these kinds of power-grabs is a red flag. Maryland has been CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA Wall Street corporate through modern history that is why we have a YAWNING GAP BETWEEN PARTIES.
'In a state where there’s a yawning gap between the Republican governor and Democratic legislature, Hogan’s action could set a dangerous precedent. In the future, Hogan might decide to rule by executive fiat rather than tangle with a legislature determined to block his moves'.
The idea that a pol would be labelled a DEMOCRAT for standing with policy stances designed to USURP our elected legislature even more IS FALSE. DEMOCRATS ARE EXACTLY THAT ---WE STAND FOR CITIZEN VOICE AND POWER. Executive Orders do the opposite. Comptroller Franchot is simply being a FAR-RIGHT WALL STREET GLOBAL POL.
The second issue is allowing a court to decide power issues at a time when all Maryland courts are filled with the most Wall Street and corporate judges who always rule against citizen rights and justice. The abuse of executive order should be in the Supreme Court----but that court is captured to Wall Street as well.
THE POINT IS THIS---AS THE ARTICLE STATES---THIS IS A SMALL ISSUE FOR A GOVERNOR TO BE USING EXECUTIVE ORDER AND AS A TEST CASE FOR WHETHER A GOVERNOR HAS THAT RIGHT OF EXECUTIVE OVERREACH----WE NEED TO BE SHOUTING 'STOP THIS EXECUTIVE BRANCH OVERREACH'.
'Does Gov. Larry Hogan Jr. have the power to issue an executive order mandating when the school year begins and ends? It’s not the most pressing question facing Maryland – but the answer could have a dramatic impact on the state’s future governance'.
Rascovar: Let courts decide who sets Md. school calendar
By Barry Rascovar | September 25, 2016
By Barry Rascovar
For MarylandReporter.com
Gov. Larry Hogan signs executive order declaring schools will strart after Labor Day. He is joined by Comptroller Peter Franchot applauding on the left and Sen. Jim Mathias with arms raised on the right. Governor’s Office Photo.
Does Gov. Larry Hogan Jr. have the power to issue an executive order mandating when the school year begins and ends? It’s not the most pressing question facing Maryland – but the answer could have a dramatic impact on the state’s future governance.
Indeed, there’s an urgent need for someone on either side of this issue to take the matter to court. A constitutional question of enormous consequence is at stake.
Hogan’s claim to executive powers over local school systems appears shaky. They are not part of the executive branch.
Similarly, the State Board of Education isn’t beholden to Hogan’s mandates. By law, the governor names board members but it then is up to this independent panel to pick a superintendent and enact statewide school policies without interference.
So how can Hogan claim authority to lay out parameters for the annual school calendar?
Setting a precedent?
In a state where there’s a yawning gap between the Republican governor and Democratic legislature, Hogan’s action could set a dangerous precedent. In the future, Hogan might decide to rule by executive fiat rather than tangle with a legislature determined to block his moves.
Repeatedly, Hogan has expressed disdain for the legislature and frustration with lawmakers’ refusal to give him 100% of what he wants. He has mocked and derided Democratic legislators. In the dispute over when to begin the school year he accused Democrats of being in the pocket of the state teachers union.
In the past, lawmakers have defeated attempts to accommodate Ocean City businesses by commencing school after Labor Day. Opposition has come not just from the teachers union but from statewide groups representing local education boards, PTAs and local school superintendents.
Their argument is based on doing what is best from an education standpoint.
Hogan’s argument is based on doing what is in the best interests of Ocean City and Deep Creek Lake businesses that see a decline in revenue when families can’t extend their vacations through the Labor Day weekend because of early school openings.
Practical considerations
Hogan is being a practical, tactical politician seeking to win cheers from parents and his political base. Returning Maryland to an earlier time when all school systems waited till after Labor Day to begin classes is in line with Republican ideology that insists we can, indeed, roll back the clock.
Educators want to be practical, too, but not in a political sense. If you want to keep the current time off for holidays, religious observances and professional training days, then the school year must start before Labor Day or extend nearly till July.
The other concern is that a later school-year start compresses the time students have to prepare for nationwide testing. Educators worry about lower test scores and harming students’ ability to qualify for gifted and talented courses or getting into colleges.
But there’s a much bigger issue at stake.
Can the governor promulgate additional executive orders telling local schools and the state education panel what to do or what they are forbidden from doing?
Can he, for example, prevent a local school system from closing for Muslim holidays? If local school boards truncate spring break to comply with his order, can Hogan then tell them not to eliminate Good Friday and Easter Monday as holidays?
Could he or a future conservative governor require the end to sex education in local schools? Could he overrule school board decisions on the treatment of transgender children?
Could he issue an executive order allowing students to attend local schools without having been vaccinated? Could he decree that the conservative constitutional doctrine of “original intent” be taught in all high school civics classes?
Dividing line of power
At the same time, Hogan might decide to issue an executive order requiring Baltimore City and Baltimore County to air-condition all of its schools immediately, regardless of the cost to local governments. He might also use executive orders to fire local superintendents or board members who don’t follow his commands.
What happens if a local school board defies Hogan this time and sets its 2017 calendar with a pre-Labor Day opening? How does Hogan make that board comply? Does he deny the jurisdiction state funds? Does he sue the board?
And where does Maryland’s law-making body come into play? Isn’t that the group given the constitutional power to enact statutes governing local education?
Where, precisely, is the dividing line between executive authority and legislative authority?
Definitive answers are sorely needed. Not off-the-cuff “I’m right” comments from the governor or “we feel strongly both ways” conclusions from the attorney general’s office. Only the Maryland Court of Appeals is in position to deliver a clarifying ruling.
It doesn’t help matters for the General Assembly to reverse Hogan’s school-schedule mandate in January and then pass a law setting out new ground rules for executive orders. This would only produce more bad blood and finger-pointing for political gain.
A court determination, on the other hand, would settle this dispute and resolve a murky area of constitutional law.
All it takes is someone to pursue legal action. So far, no one has had the courage to do so
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As an academic having worked in all venues of public education these are the issues many teachers and administrators consider over these start-date issues. The push for start BEFORE LABOR DAY had the same media attention and push some decades ago as we now have from corporate pols to reverse this policy.
The window between Sept to December is about 3 1/2 months---coming back after holidays Jan to May giving about 4 months with spring break. As a teacher tasked with learning skills development, achievement and progress in subject matter these windows are ALREADY TOO SHORT. We have a strong movement towards year-around school because of this with shorter intermittent breaks throughout the year.
The time before Labor Day has always been used to do administrative duties and getting students used to the routine of coming to class. Then they are ready for academics when they return from Labor Day weekend.
Are businesses really losing profits when our highways, trains, and planes seemed booked over three day holidays.
WHAT WE THE PEOPLE ON BOTH SIDES OF THIS ONE ISSUE NEED TO PLACE AS A PRIORITY----ANY DECISIONS MUST STAY WITH OUR LOCAL SCHOOL SYSTEMS FOR PARENTS AND CITIZENS TO HAVE THAT VOICE.
At a time we are already struggling with the corporatization of our local public school boards---we don't want more avenues for executives to usurp these powers given in the US Constitution.
Covering Northern Virginia
Julie Carey, David Culver and the News4 team covering where you live
Fairfax County School Board Considers Pre-Labor Day Start for 2017-18 Year
By Alex Kist
After racking up multiple snow days due to January's harsh winter storm, Fairfax County schools could push up the start date for the 2017-2018 school year.
The Fairfax County School Board is considering starting school before Labor Day now that the school district qualifies to waive the state's post-Labor Day requirement, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) announced Tuesday.
Typically, schools in Virginia start classes the week after the final summer holiday, complying with a state code known as the "Kings Dominion Law." The 1986 legislation grants students an extra weekend of vacation to boost local tourism and amusement park business in Virginia, as well as keep teen employees working through the end of summer.
However, Virginia's Board of Education offers an opt-out option if a school district is closed for an average of eight days per year during five of the past 10 years.
Fairfax County has averaged 8.4 missed days due to adverse weather conditions and other emergencies for five of the past 10 years, FCPS said Tuesday.
However, a later start date is not a done deal. The school board will discuss the matter further during a future work session, and will ask for feedback from parents, faculty and community members before taking a vote.
FCSP will maintain its post-Labor Day start date for the 2016-2017 school year. Classes will begin on Tuesday, Sept. 6 this fall.
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While the media tells Maryland citizens that Maryland Assembly pols were outraged at the sudden closure of a vital hospital making it outpatient-only here we see legislation passed that does the opposite----Maryland's state health system is the most corporate and profit health reform in the nation and Maryland citizens already had great disparity in health access. The goals of Maryland health reform is consolidation, deregulation, maximizing profits, and expanding those consolidated systems globally. The money to do all that is coming from what used to be ordinary hospital access for routine medical procedures ---and going to preventative outpatient-clinic care access only. Where low-income Maryland citizens were pushed to this decades ago with exclusion from Medicare oversight----now Maryland is expanding exclusion as hospitals are made more profit-driven.
Below we see this decline----the drops in admissions are being touted as EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE discharge processes but the real reasons for declining accesses is PEOPLE'S HEALTH PLANS ARE SLOWLY MAKING INPATIENT ACCESS TOO EXPENSIVE.
'Inpatient admissions at Maryland's hospitals declined by nearly 100,000, or 15 percent, in the past decade, according to the hospital association'.
Of course where this leads is more telemedicine where citizens' access to doctors come primarily through a computer screen. This is exactly what The Affordable Care Act was written to do-----so think who shouted out in support of ACA----and now we will hear these same pols coming out with outrage over all the losses to our public health system. CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was about dismantling all our public health agencies privatizing and moving Federal funding to build corporate medical/PHARMA research patenting mills. Our public health funding is now subsidizing medical patent-mills.
Citizens are silent as they tell us IT IS A REALITY that care is being shifted to outpatient settings
Legislation would make it easier to convert hospitals to outpatient centers in Maryland
Mark Arsenault, vice president for the Bowie Health Campus, is pictured in the Lab Annex.
(Lloyd Fox / Baltimore Sun)
Andrea K. McDanielsContact ReporterThe Baltimore Sun
March 17, 2016
Hospitals trying to get more outpatient center
When it opened in the 1970s, Bowie Health Center was the first of its kind in the state — an emergency center not attached to a hospital and in a free-standing building.
Only two other stand-alone medical facilities have opened in Maryland since then, one in Germantown and another in Queenstown. But demand is growing for these facilities, and they could become even more common now under legislation pending in the General Assembly.
The legislation sponsored by two powerful committee heads — state Sen. Thomas Middleton, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Del. Peter A. Hammen, chair of the House Health and Government Operations Committee — would make it easier for hospitals to shut down and convert to stand-alone facilities focused solely on outpatient and emergency care.
It's an effort to catch up with the reality hospitals face today as admissions decline, more care is shifted to outpatient settings and the costs of maintaining aging facilities mount. Such conversions already are happening in Laurel and Havre de Grace and are expected elsewhere.
Hospital officials say the growth of free-standing facilities certainly does not mean the end of traditional inpatient hospitals. Patients still need surgeries requiring overnight stays in hospitals, and the outpatient and emergency centers can offer complementary care and serve as feeders to hospitals.
Mark Arsenault is vice president for the Bowie Health Campus, one of three free-standing ambulatory care centers in the state.
(Lloyd Fox / Baltimore Sun)"Hospitals aren't going anywhere, but they're going to shrink," said Mark Arsenault, vice president of Bowie Health Center, which has added a new CT scan machine and is renovating to add private rooms and ultimately serve twice as many patients. "They're going to be much smaller."
Making it easier to get smaller is the point of the legislation. Under current law, hospital administrators must go through what they call a drawn-out process to secure a "certificate of need" from the Maryland Health Care Commission. If the legislation passes, free-standing facilities affiliated with full-service hospitals that already have a certificate of need would face a more streamlined process.
Chestertown residents fighting hospital closure get support of state officials Hospital officials say they need the ability to quickly open these centers as they face increasing pressure to reduce inpatient stays and readmissions, and meet cost constraints set by the state's rate-setting commission.
Opponents of the legislation say it would make it easier for hospitals to reduce services and avoid the backlash they might face from communities when they try to shutter a hospital.
"Hospitals have been given incentives to treat people in the hospital when necessary, but if at all possible to treat people in the lower-cost community settings," said Carmela Coyle, president of the Maryland Hospital Association.
Inpatient admissions at Maryland's hospitals declined by nearly 100,000, or 15 percent, in the past decade, according to the hospital association.
Members of the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East labor union are fighting the legislation, in part to protect jobs.
They say it creates a much-too-rapid timetable for such an important decision on whether a community loses a hospital. Under the proposed legislation, a hospital would apply for a conversion and get community input, then the Maryland Health Care Commission would have 45 days to make a decision. The certificate of need process can take many months and sometimes years under the current law.
"We recognize why they want to do this, but we can't see how this is in any way collaborative," said Claudia Balog, a SEIU senior researcher. "We want to see that the community will have a voice in what their health care looks like."
Middleton said he proposed the legislation to help hospitals meet requirements to keep a special Medicare waiver the state has that allows it to set the rates hospitals charge private insurers and Medicare. Maryland is the only state in the nation with such a waiver from the federal government.
Elsewhere, Medicare typically reimburses hospitals at a low rate, and hospitals make up for it by charging patients with private insurance a higher rate. While Medicare may pay more in Maryland, state officials have been able to keep the rate of hospital cost increases lower than in other states.
A recent update to the waiver agreement required hospitals to meet new criteria that focused on preventive care and keeping costs down. The hospitals agreed that their costs cannot grow faster than 3.58 percent in the first five years of the revised waiver. Failing to do so could result in a loss of the waiver.
"It is very, very important to keep the waiver," Middleton said. "Hospitals have got to perform. They have to push a lot of the services out into a community setting."
Decisions on whether to close a community hospital can be contentious.
When Dimensions Healthcare announced last summer that it would transition Laurel Regional Hospital into a $24 million ambulatory care center with 30 inpatient beds and limited services by 2018, the news sparked resentment from members of the community.
Dimensions said the hospital was losing money and patients, but many wondered if the company wanted to shift resources and patients to a new hospital it's planning with the University of Maryland Medical System in Largo. The Senate recently passed a bill that would set aside about $461 million from the state and matching funds from Prince George's County over a four-year period to build the new hospital.
University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health recently announced plans to replace Harford Memorial Hospital in Havre de Grace with a new hybrid care center closer to Interstate 95 even as it expands its Bel Air hospital.
And residents of Chestertown are worried that University of Maryland Shore Regional Health may convert its hospital in the Eastern Shore town into an ambulatory care center with outpatient service and emergency care, while shifting those hospital beds to its hospital in Easton. They fear a closure would mean having to travel many miles to get to a hospital, putting people in danger.
State health officials and the legislation sponsored by Middleton and Hammen exempts that hospital from the bill because of these concerns. They said the exemption gives lawmakers and the health care system that runs the hospital more time to work with community members to develop a plan to address health care access problems unique to rural communities.
The new legislation would require the hospitals to get public input, a lesson Middleton said the legislators learned from the situation in Laurel.
"When you look how at how people felt when they found out that Laurel would be shut down — the community was in outrage — it tells you there needs to be more community input."
The legislation has a good chance of passing because of the support of Middleton and Hammen. It is also backed by the Maryland Health Care Commission and the Health Services Cost Review Commission, which sets hospital rates in the state.
Democratic Del. Geraldine Valentino-Smith of Prince George's County, who represents parts of Laurel and sits on the health subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, said lawmakers should make sure adequate access to health services is a key component of the legislation.
"As policymakers we remain conscious of the need to continue to make sure there is access to affordable and quality health care in all geographic regions," she said.
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One might think this is great for government transparency but if we looks at the process for bill-making we know the devil is in the details and all that committee process---from county/city committee meetings to policy committees---these are the stages that need to be on video-tape. As someone who attends these meetings you cannot see name plates even sitting in the room and the primary public testimony is tied again to corporations and organizations. Very few individual citizens come to testify. What we see in floor sessions of the general assembly is a very sanitized final addressing of these bills.
PLEASE ENGAGE IN POLITICS ---BEING A CITIZEN MEANS TAKING THE TIME TO TRAVEL TO THAT STATE HOUSE, THAT CITY HALL, AND AS MANY PUBLIC FORUMS AND MEETINGS AS POSSIBLE.
O'Malley was hailed as great for government transparency with City Stat and Open Government. As we watched public private outsourcing make more and more government meetings CLOSED AND PROPRIETARY----we now know that Open Government meant SELLING GOVERNMENT DATA TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER. This article does the same to a Bush neo-conservative Larry Hogan ----watching this stage of bill-making is when a bill is a done deal one way or another.
Next on Hogan’s agenda: livestreaming Maryland’s legislative sessions
Gov. Larry Hogan, pictured here giving his 2016 State of the State Address, wants live streaming of all General Assembly sessions. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
By Josh Hicks February 24 Gov. Larry Hogan went out of his way Wednesday to endorse a little-known legislative proposal that would require live video streaming and archived video recordings of floor sessions of the Maryland General Assembly.
Hogan (R), who has been trading increasingly sharp barbs with Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks, said Maryland is one of only seven states that do not offer video streaming and recording of any floor proceedings. The other states are Delaware, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Vermont and Wyoming, according to a 2015 report from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Maryland’s citizens, the governor said in a statement, “deserve accountability and transparency from their elected leaders.”
The public can watch General Assembly floor sessions only in person. Audio streaming and archives are available, but listeners generally cannot discern who is speaking, because lawmakers are prohibited from using each others’ names during discussion without permission from the presiding officers of their respective chambers.
Common Cause Maryland, a nonpartisan advocacy group that promotes government openness and accountability, has also backed the bill, which is sponsored by House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga (R-Baltimore County) and Del. David Moon (D-Montgomery).
Legislative analysts said it would cost $1.2 million to outfit the House and Senate chambers with equipment and $400,000 a year to operate the system.
Hogan, however, suggested the cost would be lower. He pointed out that the Board of Public Works, of which he is a member, live-streams and archives its weekly meetings at an annual cost of between $3,000 and $3,500.
House and Senate committees live-stream and archive their hearings, but those recordings sometimes exclude debates and voting sessions. The Senate did not allow live-streaming of any committee voting sessions until 2013, when the chairman of a panel decided to broadcast the debate of controversial gun-control legislation.
The offices of House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) did not respond to requests for comment on the live-streaming legislation.
The two legislative leaders and others in the Democratic caucus have sparred frequently with Hogan during this year’s General Assembly. Last week, black lawmakers accused Hogan of racial bias, and the governor compared members of the General Assembly to rowdy college students on spring break.
“They come here for a few weeks, they start breaking up the furniture and throwing beer bottles off the balcony,” Hogan said.
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I just wanted to remind everyone that progressive posing by Obama showed he was a master of Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberalism---everything pushed was from a Republican or far-right global corporate neo-liberal think tank and then they throw these funding programs for the 99% and as we see below----these programs are either written to make access impossible or they are written to subprime. If it is going to WE THE PEOPLE---it will be written as hard to access.
Whether this was simply a bailout for small banks or not-----the amount of funding going to global corporate campus STARTUP AND INNOVATION CENTERS tied to funding projects that these corporations then look to patent----while absolutely know funding by our Federal, state, and local small business associations for our local small business economies providing goods and services everyone needs--IS THE PROBLEM.
ONE WORLD GLOBAL POLS DO NOT WANT ANY LOCAL ECONOMIES---THEY WILL ONLY PUSH AND FUND GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND CORPORATE PATRONAGE.
The US Treasury and FED sent trillions of dollars of free money to global corporations and banks during this same time.
'Reading Treasury Department’s recent reports on the Small Business Lending Fund, you might think it had actually worked. “Billions of dollars in SBLF funds are now being put to use in communities all across the nation, spurring small business growth and job creation,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin said in a press release last month. The investment “is good for our economy and good for America’s small businesses.”'
'Treasury only started approving applications in early July, three months before the program’s expiration date'
In Baltimore city hall only allows citizens to be subcontractor to subcontractors or PAY TO PLAY CORPORATE NON-PROFITS---the economic structures that exist in developing nations.
Take Our Free Money, Please!
2.1k 1 Why Obama’s $30 billion small-business loan program has flopped.
By Annie Lowrey SLATE
What happened to Obama's plan to help small businesses?
When the recovery started to flag in 2010, the Obama White House and Congressional Democrats attempted to pass a series of stimulus bills. A $150 billion, spending-heavy jobs package became $17.5 billion in tax cuts. Proposals for aid for the unemployed and the extension of Recovery Act programs faltered. But one bill that did pass was the Small Business Jobs Act, a law designed to funnel cheap money to small businesses.
The signature portion of the bill was the Small Business Lending Fund, a $30-billion pool of money for small banks meant to facilitate lending to small businesses. Little, local companies, the White House had long held, were the “engine” of the recovery and the creators of job growth. Help them, and you’d help the economy get back to growing.
Reading Treasury Department’s recent reports on the Small Business Lending Fund, you might think it had actually worked. “Billions of dollars in SBLF funds are now being put to use in communities all across the nation, spurring small business growth and job creation,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin said in a press release last month. The investment “is good for our economy and good for America’s small businesses.”
Treasury’s sunny spin aside, the program has largely flopped. It expired at the end of September having disbursed not $30 billion, or $15 billion, or even $5 billion. The SBLF is returning $26 billion to the government’s coffers. According to the Treasury Department, just 933 out of the country’s 7,700 or so community banks applied to the program. They requested just $12 billion in loans. And one-third of that sum got approved.
What happened? Well, first off, community banking organizations and small banks themselves argue that Treasury and the Federal Reserve made the program’s requirements too stringent and that they were too slow to get it off the ground. Treasury only started approving applications in early July, three months before the program’s expiration date.
The Independent Community Bankers of America lobbying group, for instance, sent repeated public letters to Treasury, asking it to clarify and loosen requirements and speed the application process. In September, with the program’s sunset in sight, it wrote: “[We] again implore Treasury and all the bank regulators to do everything in their power to ensure all SBLF applicants’ concerns are addressed … We urge Treasury to respond expeditiously to the community banks that still have questions and concerns … [W]e ask that Treasury take a hard second look.” In its defense, Treasury says that many of the community banks’ applications just did not pass muster: The banks could not prove they could make required dividend payments, or they already had missed a Treasury payment, or they were on a problem-bank list.
More troubling, the $4 billion in loans the government did make might not really help small businesses anyway. A Wall Street Journal analysis of Treasury data found that about half of the banks that took cash from the fund used some of it to pay back the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Rather than giving money to the restaurant around the corner or the startup in your neighbor’s garage, the banks gave it right back to Uncle Sam, bettering their balance sheets but doing little to spur business expansion or job growth. The Chamber of Commerce howled, branding the program little better than a bailout for small banks.
But there is another reason the program faltered—and might never have been able to succeed in the first place. Small businesses need credit to grow, to acquire equipment and hire workers to make sure more and more customers come in. But if small businesses don’t really believe that those customers are going to come in, well, they tend not to want to take on any debt. At some point, the problem isn’t a lack of credit. It’s an economy-wide lack of demand.
Have we hit that point? Almost certainly, and we’ve been there for years. According to the National Federation of Independent Business, the small business lobbying group, company owners routinely cite a lack of sales as the biggest problem for their business, more so than onerous regulatory requirements, high taxes, or trouble getting loans.
At a congressional hearing last week, Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., therefore argued that the whole program was misguided, “[wasting] today’s resources on yesterday’s problems.” In response, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted, “We’re a little surprised by the take up” but maintained the program was “well targeted.”
In a way, they're both right. Small businesses could use loans, and Treasury should be taking on risk and bending over backwards to make sure small banks are throwing free money at them. But that free money through the back door is no substitute for a flood of customers through your front door.
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We discussed how this economic crash from sovereign bond market fraud will take out broad sectors of many industries----there has been a loading of debt onto corporations identified to FAIL----with the intent of enfolding them into global corporations. This will take out what is left of a US corporation not a MULTI-NATIONAL. The industry hit hardest will be the INSURANCE industry as with AIG these insurers were allowed to sell CDS---credit default swaps---to insure what everyone knew was a goal of imploding the bond market. Insurance corporations also invest heavily in the bond market because before 2008 it was the most stable market. Then Obama and Congress deregulated that sovereign market while investors still flock to bonds as the safe investment.
Below we see an article telling us this national insurer is having to fire staff because of low interest rates. It is far more likely it is downsizing because of increasing losses from bond investments. Remember I showed how Maryland's revenue claims hundreds of millions in shortfalls----from the same thing---a collapsing bond market.
What is more insulting is this major national insurer is getting financial incentives for being in Milwaukee just as in Baltimore where each time these incentives are given NO JOBS OCCUR.
THIS NATIONAL INSURANCE CORPORATION AND THAT MILWAUKEE CITY HALL BOTH KNEW BACK IN 2013 THE ECONOMY WAS GOING TO CRASH AND A DEEP RECESSION WILL GRIP THE US FOR AT LEAST A DECADE.
Baltimore City has these same financial incentives with national/global insurance corporations downtown that will fail just as this NW Mutual. Look to see if these insurance corporations are not full of US Treasury and state municipal bond insurance and swaps.
Northwestern Mutual to cut 'hundreds' of jobs
Paul Gores, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 10:48 p.m. CDT September 29, 2016(Photo: Paul Gores/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. plans to eliminate about 100 jobs this year and "hundreds" more in 2017, the company's top executive told employees Thursday morning.
"As we invest in our strategic priorities to meet our clients’ current and future needs, we are also committed to maintaining our strong financial position during this period of unprecedented low interest rates," Betsy Hoylman, a spokeswoman for Northwestern Mutual, said in a statement. "To balance these two goals, we’ve been evaluating how we work to better serve our clients. While we will continue to focus on hiring people with the skills we need and developing our teams, some positions will be impacted and these decisions have not been easy."
John Schlifske, the chairman and chief executive of Northwestern Mutual, made the job news official during an employee town hall meeting.
The company said earlier this month that it expected to eliminate some jobs as it dealt with lingering low interest rates that have made it harder to increase profits. Low interest rates make it more difficult for insurers to grow earnings because insurance companies invest premiums from policy owners mostly in relatively safe investments tied to rates.
The Milwaukee-based insurer is one of the metro area's largest employers, with a workforce of about 5,900 at its downtown and Franklin campuses.
Information on the types of jobs that will be cut wasn't immediately available.
"We don’t have job descriptions. It’s not an across-the-board approach," Hoylman said. "Our decisions are based on our strategic needs for the future."
The company currently is constructing a $450 million, 32-story skyscraper near Milwaukee's lakefront. To some observers, the construction of a new building and an announcement about job cuts seem to conflict.
Of the jobs situation, Hoylman said, the company is "investing in certain areas and changing the way we work in others to reallocate resources" and better serve our clients
"Our Tower and Commons is an important part of our investment in the future because it provides the type of collaborative space we will need to attract talented employees and serve our clients," she said. "Our new building is part of our commitment to playing a role in this community for generations to come."
She also said Northwestern Mutual's long-term jobs commitment to the city, going back to 2013 when City of Milwaukee officials approved financial incentives for the company to expand downtown instead of at its Franklin campus, remains intact.
"We’re still committed to creating 1,900 new jobs by 2030 as well as maintaining the 1,100 jobs that were shifted when we razed our previous building on the site," Hoylman said.
WITH A COMING ECONOMIC CRASH LARGER THAN 2008 COMING?? REALLY???
In a meeting with community business leaders two weeks ago, Schlifske said the tower project will provide the kind of facility the company needs to be able to draw “knowledge workers” who can keep Northwestern Mutual at the top of its industry over time. The interior of the building will be especially geared toward the “collaborative” and around-the-clock work styles of millennials, featuring health facilities, dining and other amenities they seek.
He said the company is trying to manage expenses in the short run while planning for the future with the tower project.
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Clinton/Bush/Obama terms were an exercise in moving the power of legislation from our elected Congress, state assemblies, and city halls to the EXECUTIVE BRANCH----PRESIDENT, GOVERNOR, MAYOR----by what we describe above---but also we see below--the executive order. Presidents have illegally used this process and now it is coming more and more to our state and local executives. The idea that starting our K-12 before or after Labor Day is so critical as to come to these kinds of power-grabs is a red flag. Maryland has been CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA Wall Street corporate through modern history that is why we have a YAWNING GAP BETWEEN PARTIES.
'In a state where there’s a yawning gap between the Republican governor and Democratic legislature, Hogan’s action could set a dangerous precedent. In the future, Hogan might decide to rule by executive fiat rather than tangle with a legislature determined to block his moves'.
The idea that a pol would be labelled a DEMOCRAT for standing with policy stances designed to USURP our elected legislature even more IS FALSE. DEMOCRATS ARE EXACTLY THAT ---WE STAND FOR CITIZEN VOICE AND POWER. Executive Orders do the opposite. Comptroller Franchot is simply being a FAR-RIGHT WALL STREET GLOBAL POL.
The second issue is allowing a court to decide power issues at a time when all Maryland courts are filled with the most Wall Street and corporate judges who always rule against citizen rights and justice. The abuse of executive order should be in the Supreme Court----but that court is captured to Wall Street as well.
THE POINT IS THIS---AS THE ARTICLE STATES---THIS IS A SMALL ISSUE FOR A GOVERNOR TO BE USING EXECUTIVE ORDER AND AS A TEST CASE FOR WHETHER A GOVERNOR HAS THAT RIGHT OF EXECUTIVE OVERREACH----WE NEED TO BE SHOUTING 'STOP THIS EXECUTIVE BRANCH OVERREACH'.
'Does Gov. Larry Hogan Jr. have the power to issue an executive order mandating when the school year begins and ends? It’s not the most pressing question facing Maryland – but the answer could have a dramatic impact on the state’s future governance'.
Rascovar: Let courts decide who sets Md. school calendar
By Barry Rascovar | September 25, 2016
By Barry Rascovar
For MarylandReporter.com
Gov. Larry Hogan signs executive order declaring schools will strart after Labor Day. He is joined by Comptroller Peter Franchot applauding on the left and Sen. Jim Mathias with arms raised on the right. Governor’s Office Photo.
Does Gov. Larry Hogan Jr. have the power to issue an executive order mandating when the school year begins and ends? It’s not the most pressing question facing Maryland – but the answer could have a dramatic impact on the state’s future governance.
Indeed, there’s an urgent need for someone on either side of this issue to take the matter to court. A constitutional question of enormous consequence is at stake.
Hogan’s claim to executive powers over local school systems appears shaky. They are not part of the executive branch.
Similarly, the State Board of Education isn’t beholden to Hogan’s mandates. By law, the governor names board members but it then is up to this independent panel to pick a superintendent and enact statewide school policies without interference.
So how can Hogan claim authority to lay out parameters for the annual school calendar?
Setting a precedent?
In a state where there’s a yawning gap between the Republican governor and Democratic legislature, Hogan’s action could set a dangerous precedent. In the future, Hogan might decide to rule by executive fiat rather than tangle with a legislature determined to block his moves.
Repeatedly, Hogan has expressed disdain for the legislature and frustration with lawmakers’ refusal to give him 100% of what he wants. He has mocked and derided Democratic legislators. In the dispute over when to begin the school year he accused Democrats of being in the pocket of the state teachers union.
In the past, lawmakers have defeated attempts to accommodate Ocean City businesses by commencing school after Labor Day. Opposition has come not just from the teachers union but from statewide groups representing local education boards, PTAs and local school superintendents.
Their argument is based on doing what is best from an education standpoint.
Hogan’s argument is based on doing what is in the best interests of Ocean City and Deep Creek Lake businesses that see a decline in revenue when families can’t extend their vacations through the Labor Day weekend because of early school openings.
Practical considerations
Hogan is being a practical, tactical politician seeking to win cheers from parents and his political base. Returning Maryland to an earlier time when all school systems waited till after Labor Day to begin classes is in line with Republican ideology that insists we can, indeed, roll back the clock.
Educators want to be practical, too, but not in a political sense. If you want to keep the current time off for holidays, religious observances and professional training days, then the school year must start before Labor Day or extend nearly till July.
The other concern is that a later school-year start compresses the time students have to prepare for nationwide testing. Educators worry about lower test scores and harming students’ ability to qualify for gifted and talented courses or getting into colleges.
But there’s a much bigger issue at stake.
Can the governor promulgate additional executive orders telling local schools and the state education panel what to do or what they are forbidden from doing?
Can he, for example, prevent a local school system from closing for Muslim holidays? If local school boards truncate spring break to comply with his order, can Hogan then tell them not to eliminate Good Friday and Easter Monday as holidays?
Could he or a future conservative governor require the end to sex education in local schools? Could he overrule school board decisions on the treatment of transgender children?
Could he issue an executive order allowing students to attend local schools without having been vaccinated? Could he decree that the conservative constitutional doctrine of “original intent” be taught in all high school civics classes?
Dividing line of power
At the same time, Hogan might decide to issue an executive order requiring Baltimore City and Baltimore County to air-condition all of its schools immediately, regardless of the cost to local governments. He might also use executive orders to fire local superintendents or board members who don’t follow his commands.
What happens if a local school board defies Hogan this time and sets its 2017 calendar with a pre-Labor Day opening? How does Hogan make that board comply? Does he deny the jurisdiction state funds? Does he sue the board?
And where does Maryland’s law-making body come into play? Isn’t that the group given the constitutional power to enact statutes governing local education?
Where, precisely, is the dividing line between executive authority and legislative authority?
Definitive answers are sorely needed. Not off-the-cuff “I’m right” comments from the governor or “we feel strongly both ways” conclusions from the attorney general’s office. Only the Maryland Court of Appeals is in position to deliver a clarifying ruling.
It doesn’t help matters for the General Assembly to reverse Hogan’s school-schedule mandate in January and then pass a law setting out new ground rules for executive orders. This would only produce more bad blood and finger-pointing for political gain.
A court determination, on the other hand, would settle this dispute and resolve a murky area of constitutional law.
All it takes is someone to pursue legal action. So far, no one has had the courage to do so
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As an academic having worked in all venues of public education these are the issues many teachers and administrators consider over these start-date issues. The push for start BEFORE LABOR DAY had the same media attention and push some decades ago as we now have from corporate pols to reverse this policy.
The window between Sept to December is about 3 1/2 months---coming back after holidays Jan to May giving about 4 months with spring break. As a teacher tasked with learning skills development, achievement and progress in subject matter these windows are ALREADY TOO SHORT. We have a strong movement towards year-around school because of this with shorter intermittent breaks throughout the year.
The time before Labor Day has always been used to do administrative duties and getting students used to the routine of coming to class. Then they are ready for academics when they return from Labor Day weekend.
Are businesses really losing profits when our highways, trains, and planes seemed booked over three day holidays.
WHAT WE THE PEOPLE ON BOTH SIDES OF THIS ONE ISSUE NEED TO PLACE AS A PRIORITY----ANY DECISIONS MUST STAY WITH OUR LOCAL SCHOOL SYSTEMS FOR PARENTS AND CITIZENS TO HAVE THAT VOICE.
At a time we are already struggling with the corporatization of our local public school boards---we don't want more avenues for executives to usurp these powers given in the US Constitution.
Covering Northern Virginia
Julie Carey, David Culver and the News4 team covering where you live
Fairfax County School Board Considers Pre-Labor Day Start for 2017-18 Year
By Alex Kist
After racking up multiple snow days due to January's harsh winter storm, Fairfax County schools could push up the start date for the 2017-2018 school year.
The Fairfax County School Board is considering starting school before Labor Day now that the school district qualifies to waive the state's post-Labor Day requirement, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) announced Tuesday.
Typically, schools in Virginia start classes the week after the final summer holiday, complying with a state code known as the "Kings Dominion Law." The 1986 legislation grants students an extra weekend of vacation to boost local tourism and amusement park business in Virginia, as well as keep teen employees working through the end of summer.
However, Virginia's Board of Education offers an opt-out option if a school district is closed for an average of eight days per year during five of the past 10 years.
Fairfax County has averaged 8.4 missed days due to adverse weather conditions and other emergencies for five of the past 10 years, FCPS said Tuesday.
However, a later start date is not a done deal. The school board will discuss the matter further during a future work session, and will ask for feedback from parents, faculty and community members before taking a vote.
FCSP will maintain its post-Labor Day start date for the 2016-2017 school year. Classes will begin on Tuesday, Sept. 6 this fall.
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While the media tells Maryland citizens that Maryland Assembly pols were outraged at the sudden closure of a vital hospital making it outpatient-only here we see legislation passed that does the opposite----Maryland's state health system is the most corporate and profit health reform in the nation and Maryland citizens already had great disparity in health access. The goals of Maryland health reform is consolidation, deregulation, maximizing profits, and expanding those consolidated systems globally. The money to do all that is coming from what used to be ordinary hospital access for routine medical procedures ---and going to preventative outpatient-clinic care access only. Where low-income Maryland citizens were pushed to this decades ago with exclusion from Medicare oversight----now Maryland is expanding exclusion as hospitals are made more profit-driven.
Below we see this decline----the drops in admissions are being touted as EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE discharge processes but the real reasons for declining accesses is PEOPLE'S HEALTH PLANS ARE SLOWLY MAKING INPATIENT ACCESS TOO EXPENSIVE.
'Inpatient admissions at Maryland's hospitals declined by nearly 100,000, or 15 percent, in the past decade, according to the hospital association'.
Of course where this leads is more telemedicine where citizens' access to doctors come primarily through a computer screen. This is exactly what The Affordable Care Act was written to do-----so think who shouted out in support of ACA----and now we will hear these same pols coming out with outrage over all the losses to our public health system. CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was about dismantling all our public health agencies privatizing and moving Federal funding to build corporate medical/PHARMA research patenting mills. Our public health funding is now subsidizing medical patent-mills.
Citizens are silent as they tell us IT IS A REALITY that care is being shifted to outpatient settings
Legislation would make it easier to convert hospitals to outpatient centers in Maryland
Mark Arsenault, vice president for the Bowie Health Campus, is pictured in the Lab Annex.
(Lloyd Fox / Baltimore Sun)
Andrea K. McDanielsContact ReporterThe Baltimore Sun
March 17, 2016
Hospitals trying to get more outpatient center
When it opened in the 1970s, Bowie Health Center was the first of its kind in the state — an emergency center not attached to a hospital and in a free-standing building.
Only two other stand-alone medical facilities have opened in Maryland since then, one in Germantown and another in Queenstown. But demand is growing for these facilities, and they could become even more common now under legislation pending in the General Assembly.
The legislation sponsored by two powerful committee heads — state Sen. Thomas Middleton, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Del. Peter A. Hammen, chair of the House Health and Government Operations Committee — would make it easier for hospitals to shut down and convert to stand-alone facilities focused solely on outpatient and emergency care.
It's an effort to catch up with the reality hospitals face today as admissions decline, more care is shifted to outpatient settings and the costs of maintaining aging facilities mount. Such conversions already are happening in Laurel and Havre de Grace and are expected elsewhere.
Hospital officials say the growth of free-standing facilities certainly does not mean the end of traditional inpatient hospitals. Patients still need surgeries requiring overnight stays in hospitals, and the outpatient and emergency centers can offer complementary care and serve as feeders to hospitals.
Mark Arsenault is vice president for the Bowie Health Campus, one of three free-standing ambulatory care centers in the state.
(Lloyd Fox / Baltimore Sun)"Hospitals aren't going anywhere, but they're going to shrink," said Mark Arsenault, vice president of Bowie Health Center, which has added a new CT scan machine and is renovating to add private rooms and ultimately serve twice as many patients. "They're going to be much smaller."
Making it easier to get smaller is the point of the legislation. Under current law, hospital administrators must go through what they call a drawn-out process to secure a "certificate of need" from the Maryland Health Care Commission. If the legislation passes, free-standing facilities affiliated with full-service hospitals that already have a certificate of need would face a more streamlined process.
Chestertown residents fighting hospital closure get support of state officials Hospital officials say they need the ability to quickly open these centers as they face increasing pressure to reduce inpatient stays and readmissions, and meet cost constraints set by the state's rate-setting commission.
Opponents of the legislation say it would make it easier for hospitals to reduce services and avoid the backlash they might face from communities when they try to shutter a hospital.
"Hospitals have been given incentives to treat people in the hospital when necessary, but if at all possible to treat people in the lower-cost community settings," said Carmela Coyle, president of the Maryland Hospital Association.
Inpatient admissions at Maryland's hospitals declined by nearly 100,000, or 15 percent, in the past decade, according to the hospital association.
Members of the 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East labor union are fighting the legislation, in part to protect jobs.
They say it creates a much-too-rapid timetable for such an important decision on whether a community loses a hospital. Under the proposed legislation, a hospital would apply for a conversion and get community input, then the Maryland Health Care Commission would have 45 days to make a decision. The certificate of need process can take many months and sometimes years under the current law.
"We recognize why they want to do this, but we can't see how this is in any way collaborative," said Claudia Balog, a SEIU senior researcher. "We want to see that the community will have a voice in what their health care looks like."
Middleton said he proposed the legislation to help hospitals meet requirements to keep a special Medicare waiver the state has that allows it to set the rates hospitals charge private insurers and Medicare. Maryland is the only state in the nation with such a waiver from the federal government.
Elsewhere, Medicare typically reimburses hospitals at a low rate, and hospitals make up for it by charging patients with private insurance a higher rate. While Medicare may pay more in Maryland, state officials have been able to keep the rate of hospital cost increases lower than in other states.
A recent update to the waiver agreement required hospitals to meet new criteria that focused on preventive care and keeping costs down. The hospitals agreed that their costs cannot grow faster than 3.58 percent in the first five years of the revised waiver. Failing to do so could result in a loss of the waiver.
"It is very, very important to keep the waiver," Middleton said. "Hospitals have got to perform. They have to push a lot of the services out into a community setting."
Decisions on whether to close a community hospital can be contentious.
When Dimensions Healthcare announced last summer that it would transition Laurel Regional Hospital into a $24 million ambulatory care center with 30 inpatient beds and limited services by 2018, the news sparked resentment from members of the community.
Dimensions said the hospital was losing money and patients, but many wondered if the company wanted to shift resources and patients to a new hospital it's planning with the University of Maryland Medical System in Largo. The Senate recently passed a bill that would set aside about $461 million from the state and matching funds from Prince George's County over a four-year period to build the new hospital.
University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health recently announced plans to replace Harford Memorial Hospital in Havre de Grace with a new hybrid care center closer to Interstate 95 even as it expands its Bel Air hospital.
And residents of Chestertown are worried that University of Maryland Shore Regional Health may convert its hospital in the Eastern Shore town into an ambulatory care center with outpatient service and emergency care, while shifting those hospital beds to its hospital in Easton. They fear a closure would mean having to travel many miles to get to a hospital, putting people in danger.
State health officials and the legislation sponsored by Middleton and Hammen exempts that hospital from the bill because of these concerns. They said the exemption gives lawmakers and the health care system that runs the hospital more time to work with community members to develop a plan to address health care access problems unique to rural communities.
The new legislation would require the hospitals to get public input, a lesson Middleton said the legislators learned from the situation in Laurel.
"When you look how at how people felt when they found out that Laurel would be shut down — the community was in outrage — it tells you there needs to be more community input."
The legislation has a good chance of passing because of the support of Middleton and Hammen. It is also backed by the Maryland Health Care Commission and the Health Services Cost Review Commission, which sets hospital rates in the state.
Democratic Del. Geraldine Valentino-Smith of Prince George's County, who represents parts of Laurel and sits on the health subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, said lawmakers should make sure adequate access to health services is a key component of the legislation.
"As policymakers we remain conscious of the need to continue to make sure there is access to affordable and quality health care in all geographic regions," she said.
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One might think this is great for government transparency but if we looks at the process for bill-making we know the devil is in the details and all that committee process---from county/city committee meetings to policy committees---these are the stages that need to be on video-tape. As someone who attends these meetings you cannot see name plates even sitting in the room and the primary public testimony is tied again to corporations and organizations. Very few individual citizens come to testify. What we see in floor sessions of the general assembly is a very sanitized final addressing of these bills.
PLEASE ENGAGE IN POLITICS ---BEING A CITIZEN MEANS TAKING THE TIME TO TRAVEL TO THAT STATE HOUSE, THAT CITY HALL, AND AS MANY PUBLIC FORUMS AND MEETINGS AS POSSIBLE.
O'Malley was hailed as great for government transparency with City Stat and Open Government. As we watched public private outsourcing make more and more government meetings CLOSED AND PROPRIETARY----we now know that Open Government meant SELLING GOVERNMENT DATA TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER. This article does the same to a Bush neo-conservative Larry Hogan ----watching this stage of bill-making is when a bill is a done deal one way or another.
Next on Hogan’s agenda: livestreaming Maryland’s legislative sessions
Gov. Larry Hogan, pictured here giving his 2016 State of the State Address, wants live streaming of all General Assembly sessions. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
By Josh Hicks February 24 Gov. Larry Hogan went out of his way Wednesday to endorse a little-known legislative proposal that would require live video streaming and archived video recordings of floor sessions of the Maryland General Assembly.
Hogan (R), who has been trading increasingly sharp barbs with Democratic lawmakers in recent weeks, said Maryland is one of only seven states that do not offer video streaming and recording of any floor proceedings. The other states are Delaware, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Vermont and Wyoming, according to a 2015 report from the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Maryland’s citizens, the governor said in a statement, “deserve accountability and transparency from their elected leaders.”
The public can watch General Assembly floor sessions only in person. Audio streaming and archives are available, but listeners generally cannot discern who is speaking, because lawmakers are prohibited from using each others’ names during discussion without permission from the presiding officers of their respective chambers.
Common Cause Maryland, a nonpartisan advocacy group that promotes government openness and accountability, has also backed the bill, which is sponsored by House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga (R-Baltimore County) and Del. David Moon (D-Montgomery).
Legislative analysts said it would cost $1.2 million to outfit the House and Senate chambers with equipment and $400,000 a year to operate the system.
Hogan, however, suggested the cost would be lower. He pointed out that the Board of Public Works, of which he is a member, live-streams and archives its weekly meetings at an annual cost of between $3,000 and $3,500.
House and Senate committees live-stream and archive their hearings, but those recordings sometimes exclude debates and voting sessions. The Senate did not allow live-streaming of any committee voting sessions until 2013, when the chairman of a panel decided to broadcast the debate of controversial gun-control legislation.
The offices of House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) did not respond to requests for comment on the live-streaming legislation.
The two legislative leaders and others in the Democratic caucus have sparred frequently with Hogan during this year’s General Assembly. Last week, black lawmakers accused Hogan of racial bias, and the governor compared members of the General Assembly to rowdy college students on spring break.
“They come here for a few weeks, they start breaking up the furniture and throwing beer bottles off the balcony,” Hogan said.
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I just wanted to remind everyone that progressive posing by Obama showed he was a master of Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberalism---everything pushed was from a Republican or far-right global corporate neo-liberal think tank and then they throw these funding programs for the 99% and as we see below----these programs are either written to make access impossible or they are written to subprime. If it is going to WE THE PEOPLE---it will be written as hard to access.
Whether this was simply a bailout for small banks or not-----the amount of funding going to global corporate campus STARTUP AND INNOVATION CENTERS tied to funding projects that these corporations then look to patent----while absolutely know funding by our Federal, state, and local small business associations for our local small business economies providing goods and services everyone needs--IS THE PROBLEM.
ONE WORLD GLOBAL POLS DO NOT WANT ANY LOCAL ECONOMIES---THEY WILL ONLY PUSH AND FUND GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND CORPORATE PATRONAGE.
The US Treasury and FED sent trillions of dollars of free money to global corporations and banks during this same time.
'Reading Treasury Department’s recent reports on the Small Business Lending Fund, you might think it had actually worked. “Billions of dollars in SBLF funds are now being put to use in communities all across the nation, spurring small business growth and job creation,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin said in a press release last month. The investment “is good for our economy and good for America’s small businesses.”'
'Treasury only started approving applications in early July, three months before the program’s expiration date'
In Baltimore city hall only allows citizens to be subcontractor to subcontractors or PAY TO PLAY CORPORATE NON-PROFITS---the economic structures that exist in developing nations.
Take Our Free Money, Please!
2.1k 1 Why Obama’s $30 billion small-business loan program has flopped.
By Annie Lowrey SLATE
What happened to Obama's plan to help small businesses?
When the recovery started to flag in 2010, the Obama White House and Congressional Democrats attempted to pass a series of stimulus bills. A $150 billion, spending-heavy jobs package became $17.5 billion in tax cuts. Proposals for aid for the unemployed and the extension of Recovery Act programs faltered. But one bill that did pass was the Small Business Jobs Act, a law designed to funnel cheap money to small businesses.
The signature portion of the bill was the Small Business Lending Fund, a $30-billion pool of money for small banks meant to facilitate lending to small businesses. Little, local companies, the White House had long held, were the “engine” of the recovery and the creators of job growth. Help them, and you’d help the economy get back to growing.
Reading Treasury Department’s recent reports on the Small Business Lending Fund, you might think it had actually worked. “Billions of dollars in SBLF funds are now being put to use in communities all across the nation, spurring small business growth and job creation,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin said in a press release last month. The investment “is good for our economy and good for America’s small businesses.”
Treasury’s sunny spin aside, the program has largely flopped. It expired at the end of September having disbursed not $30 billion, or $15 billion, or even $5 billion. The SBLF is returning $26 billion to the government’s coffers. According to the Treasury Department, just 933 out of the country’s 7,700 or so community banks applied to the program. They requested just $12 billion in loans. And one-third of that sum got approved.
What happened? Well, first off, community banking organizations and small banks themselves argue that Treasury and the Federal Reserve made the program’s requirements too stringent and that they were too slow to get it off the ground. Treasury only started approving applications in early July, three months before the program’s expiration date.
The Independent Community Bankers of America lobbying group, for instance, sent repeated public letters to Treasury, asking it to clarify and loosen requirements and speed the application process. In September, with the program’s sunset in sight, it wrote: “[We] again implore Treasury and all the bank regulators to do everything in their power to ensure all SBLF applicants’ concerns are addressed … We urge Treasury to respond expeditiously to the community banks that still have questions and concerns … [W]e ask that Treasury take a hard second look.” In its defense, Treasury says that many of the community banks’ applications just did not pass muster: The banks could not prove they could make required dividend payments, or they already had missed a Treasury payment, or they were on a problem-bank list.
More troubling, the $4 billion in loans the government did make might not really help small businesses anyway. A Wall Street Journal analysis of Treasury data found that about half of the banks that took cash from the fund used some of it to pay back the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Rather than giving money to the restaurant around the corner or the startup in your neighbor’s garage, the banks gave it right back to Uncle Sam, bettering their balance sheets but doing little to spur business expansion or job growth. The Chamber of Commerce howled, branding the program little better than a bailout for small banks.
But there is another reason the program faltered—and might never have been able to succeed in the first place. Small businesses need credit to grow, to acquire equipment and hire workers to make sure more and more customers come in. But if small businesses don’t really believe that those customers are going to come in, well, they tend not to want to take on any debt. At some point, the problem isn’t a lack of credit. It’s an economy-wide lack of demand.
Have we hit that point? Almost certainly, and we’ve been there for years. According to the National Federation of Independent Business, the small business lobbying group, company owners routinely cite a lack of sales as the biggest problem for their business, more so than onerous regulatory requirements, high taxes, or trouble getting loans.
At a congressional hearing last week, Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., therefore argued that the whole program was misguided, “[wasting] today’s resources on yesterday’s problems.” In response, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted, “We’re a little surprised by the take up” but maintained the program was “well targeted.”
In a way, they're both right. Small businesses could use loans, and Treasury should be taking on risk and bending over backwards to make sure small banks are throwing free money at them. But that free money through the back door is no substitute for a flood of customers through your front door.
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We discussed how this economic crash from sovereign bond market fraud will take out broad sectors of many industries----there has been a loading of debt onto corporations identified to FAIL----with the intent of enfolding them into global corporations. This will take out what is left of a US corporation not a MULTI-NATIONAL. The industry hit hardest will be the INSURANCE industry as with AIG these insurers were allowed to sell CDS---credit default swaps---to insure what everyone knew was a goal of imploding the bond market. Insurance corporations also invest heavily in the bond market because before 2008 it was the most stable market. Then Obama and Congress deregulated that sovereign market while investors still flock to bonds as the safe investment.
Below we see an article telling us this national insurer is having to fire staff because of low interest rates. It is far more likely it is downsizing because of increasing losses from bond investments. Remember I showed how Maryland's revenue claims hundreds of millions in shortfalls----from the same thing---a collapsing bond market.
What is more insulting is this major national insurer is getting financial incentives for being in Milwaukee just as in Baltimore where each time these incentives are given NO JOBS OCCUR.
THIS NATIONAL INSURANCE CORPORATION AND THAT MILWAUKEE CITY HALL BOTH KNEW BACK IN 2013 THE ECONOMY WAS GOING TO CRASH AND A DEEP RECESSION WILL GRIP THE US FOR AT LEAST A DECADE.
Baltimore City has these same financial incentives with national/global insurance corporations downtown that will fail just as this NW Mutual. Look to see if these insurance corporations are not full of US Treasury and state municipal bond insurance and swaps.
Northwestern Mutual to cut 'hundreds' of jobs
Paul Gores, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 10:48 p.m. CDT September 29, 2016(Photo: Paul Gores/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. plans to eliminate about 100 jobs this year and "hundreds" more in 2017, the company's top executive told employees Thursday morning.
"As we invest in our strategic priorities to meet our clients’ current and future needs, we are also committed to maintaining our strong financial position during this period of unprecedented low interest rates," Betsy Hoylman, a spokeswoman for Northwestern Mutual, said in a statement. "To balance these two goals, we’ve been evaluating how we work to better serve our clients. While we will continue to focus on hiring people with the skills we need and developing our teams, some positions will be impacted and these decisions have not been easy."
John Schlifske, the chairman and chief executive of Northwestern Mutual, made the job news official during an employee town hall meeting.
The company said earlier this month that it expected to eliminate some jobs as it dealt with lingering low interest rates that have made it harder to increase profits. Low interest rates make it more difficult for insurers to grow earnings because insurance companies invest premiums from policy owners mostly in relatively safe investments tied to rates.
The Milwaukee-based insurer is one of the metro area's largest employers, with a workforce of about 5,900 at its downtown and Franklin campuses.
Information on the types of jobs that will be cut wasn't immediately available.
"We don’t have job descriptions. It’s not an across-the-board approach," Hoylman said. "Our decisions are based on our strategic needs for the future."
The company currently is constructing a $450 million, 32-story skyscraper near Milwaukee's lakefront. To some observers, the construction of a new building and an announcement about job cuts seem to conflict.
Of the jobs situation, Hoylman said, the company is "investing in certain areas and changing the way we work in others to reallocate resources" and better serve our clients
"Our Tower and Commons is an important part of our investment in the future because it provides the type of collaborative space we will need to attract talented employees and serve our clients," she said. "Our new building is part of our commitment to playing a role in this community for generations to come."
She also said Northwestern Mutual's long-term jobs commitment to the city, going back to 2013 when City of Milwaukee officials approved financial incentives for the company to expand downtown instead of at its Franklin campus, remains intact.
"We’re still committed to creating 1,900 new jobs by 2030 as well as maintaining the 1,100 jobs that were shifted when we razed our previous building on the site," Hoylman said.
WITH A COMING ECONOMIC CRASH LARGER THAN 2008 COMING?? REALLY???
In a meeting with community business leaders two weeks ago, Schlifske said the tower project will provide the kind of facility the company needs to be able to draw “knowledge workers” who can keep Northwestern Mutual at the top of its industry over time. The interior of the building will be especially geared toward the “collaborative” and around-the-clock work styles of millennials, featuring health facilities, dining and other amenities they seek.
He said the company is trying to manage expenses in the short run while planning for the future with the tower project.
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