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December 31st, 2013

12/31/2013

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WE ELECTED A SUPERMAJORITY OF DEMOCRATS TO HOLD CORPORATIONS ACCOUNTABLE FOR MASSIVE FRAUD AND TO REVERSE WEALTH INEQUITY CAUSED BY THOSE FRAUDS......NEO-LIBERALS DOUBLED-DOWN ON HANDING MORE MONEY TO THESE FRAUDSTERS!

While we can expect more corporate give-aways, please run labor and justice candidates that shout out to raise taxes sufficiently -----do not fall for the blip we got from O'Malley and Obama!


Below I look at how Europe is leading the way on progressive economic recovery.  They are not saints by any means, but they are listening more to their citizens!

France is the leader in European financial crisis policy in moving away from protecting bank profits to making these banks write down the debt from fraud.  It is also good to know that France was one country that was not heavily involved in all of these financial frauds.  You don't hear of a French bank as you do US, UK, and Germany.  They are not innocent, but kept their noses clean for the most part.  We hope Hollande is saying to the wealthy French corporations that threaten to leave.....go ahead and leave so we can build small and regional businesses!  Obama has openly campaigned across Europe against these policies----the bank financial transaction tax and higher tax on wealth so we won't get it through now, but work on this state by state.....your governor should not be afraid to give global corporations and national chains the boot if they do not pay higher taxes!


France cleared to impose controversial 'millionaire tax'



Emile Picy and Natalie Huet Reuters 1:34 p.m. EST, December 29, 2013


PARIS (Reuters) - France's Constitutional Council gave the green light on Sunday to the government's controversial 'millionaire tax', to be levied on companies that pay salaries of more than 1 million euros ($1.38 million) a year.

The measure, introduced in line with a pledge by President Francois Hollande to make the rich do more to pull France out of crisis, has infuriated business leaders and soccer clubs, which at one point threatened to go on strike.

It was originally designed as a 75 percent tax to be paid by high earners on the portion of annual income exceeding 1 million euros, but the council rejected it last year, saying it was unfair. France's top administrative court later said that 66 percent was the legal maximum for individuals.

The Socialist government has since reworked the tax to levy it on companies instead, raising the ire of entrepreneurs.

Under its new design, which the council found constitutional, the tax will be a 50 percent levy on the portion of wages above 1 million euros in 2013 and 2014.

Including social contributions, the rate will effectively remain about 75 percent, though the tax will be capped at 5 percent of a company's turnover.

The tax is expected to affect about 470 companies and a dozen soccer clubs, and is forecast to raise approximately 210 million euros a year.

The Constitutional Council, a court comprising judges and former French presidents, has the power to annul laws if they are deemed to violate the constitution.

ANTI-BUSINESS

Tax increases designed to reduce France's budget deficit have fuelled rising discontent in the country, with recent polls giving Hollande the lowest approval rating of any French president on record.

His 2012 supertax election pledge infuriated high earners in France and prompted actor Gerard Depardieu to flee the country. It has also alienated entrepreneurs and foreign investors, who have accused Hollande of being anti-business.

Hollande has said that the wealthy should contribute more to help to repair the country's finances, arguing that the supertax should also encourage companies to curb excessive executive pay.

In Sunday's ruling, the Constitutional Council rejected planned wealth tax measures that it said imposed levies on potential gains - such as those on life insurance policies - and thus risked overestimating a taxpayer's actual resources.

It also quashed several measures designed to crack down on tax avoidance schemes through which individuals and companies use legal loopholes to minimize their tax bills.

One of the proposed measures required consultants and firms offering tax planning services to disclose such schemes before marketing them. The council found the provision was too vague and ran counter to freedom of entrepreneurship. ($1 = 0.7258 euros)

___________________________________________
Below you see how our brave Capitol Hill pols work for American citizens.  You see a .03% tax....HOW SMALL IS THAT with no mention of justice in recovering fraud.  Tens of trillions of dollars in fraud with a few hundred billion over 10 years.  They are simply meeting the public demand with a policy that does nothing.  This is called 'progressive'.  Harkin and DeFazio could shout loudly and strongly that we need to declare a War on Fraud ------that would be progressive!  As the article on the European stance shows the US could not even place it in the Dodd Frank Financial Reform bill when democrats had a supermajority!

NEO-LIBERALS WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND THAT IS WHY CONGRESS WILL NOT MOVE FORWARD ON THIS! 


Democratic Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) on Thursday introduced a bill to slap a 0.03 percent tax on financial transactions in the U.S. They have introduced this same bill repeatedly in the past. But this time, against the backdrop of endless budget battles between the White House and Congress, the lawmakers framed it primarily as a revenue-raiser, noting that the Joint Committee on Taxation says the tax would raise $352 billion over the next 10 years.

_____________________________________________



U.S. Accused of “Discouraging” Financial Transaction Tax

By Carey L. Biron Reprint |       | Print | Send by email WASHINGTON, Sep 28 2012 (IPS) - On Friday, 62 civil-society organisations charged the U.S. State Department with spreading “misinformation” regarding the feasibility of levying a small tax on stock sales and other financial transactions, revenues from which could be used for national and international public goods.

Referring to a July meeting of the United Nations that discussed long-term financing options to help countries deal with the effects of climate change, a letter sent Friday to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accuses a member of the U.S. negotiating team of “misstatements”. The letter requests that the U.S. government “not discourage other countries from supporting this tax”.

Calls for such a levy, known as a financial transaction tax (FTT, also called a Robin Hood tax), have been gaining strength in the United States and abroad in recent months. Proponents suggest that such an approach could not only raise hundreds of billions of dollars for use in mass-scale efforts towards health, education or climate change, but could also cut down on the type of computerised high-speed trading that facilitates damaging commodities speculation.

The letter comes just ahead of a follow-up to the July meeting, which next week will again discuss potential ways to fund the estimated hundred-billion-dollar-a-year effort to mitigate and prepare for the effects of climate change. The talks are meant to lead to a report that will guide the U.N.’s thinking on the issue of climate finance.

“We firmly believe it is past time for the financial sector to pay its fair share of taxes, and for the government of the United States to support (a) modest imposition on financiers and multinational corporations in order to meet the needs of ordinary people,” the letter, signed by dozens of environment, aid, development and social-justice organisations, stated.

“At a time when public funds are deemed scarce, a (FTT) would create a new source of revenue to pay for desperately needed public goods.”

Despite earlier hopes that President Barack Obama (rumoured to support the issue) would eventually come out as a proponent of an FTT, the president has not yet spoken publicly on the issue. In August, his communications director was described in media reports as being unenthusiastic about the issue.

Growing consensus

At the July U.N. meeting, U.S. State Department official Paul Bodnar, a member of the U.S. climate negotiations team, stated, “International revenue-generation mechanisms can seem attractive because of the large sums they appear to provide, but many of them are problematic conceptually or difficult to implement in practice.”

Bodnar highlighted FTT as a specific example.

“Actually, FTT has lots of support, especially among a number of developing countries as well as some developed countries,” Karen Orenstein, with Friends of the Earth, an environment watchdog and one of the signatories of the new letter, told IPS. “So having the United States disparage this approach in an international context is not helpful, especially when it is doing so to try to discourage other countries.”

Friday’s letter accuses Bodnar of three specific misstatements: calling into question the feasibility of imposing an FTT globally; suggesting that traders would figure out how to circumvent the FTT, thus limiting its ability to raise significant revenue and even encouraging lucrative finance centres to move to other countries; and offering that the source of climate financing should be linked directly to emissions.

(By deadline, the State Department had not responded to requests for comment.)

While the third point is open to debate – the letter notes that tax revenues are not often linked directly to the source of taxation – the first two could indeed call into question the overall feasibility of an FTT.

Yet the letter, first, points out that FTTs have already been implemented in more than 30 countries, suggesting that they “do not have to be global to work”; and, second, highlights a finding by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that FTTs “do not automatically drive out financial activity to an unacceptable extent”.

Indeed, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde has publicly stated, “I persist in thinking we should explore this idea and examine how realistic and how feasible it is and do this on an international basis.”

Lagarde is joined by a rising chorus of economists, activists, development experts and even high-finance luminaries in support of the idea.

In mid-September, a new bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would place miniscule taxes on transactions involving stocks, bonds and derivatives, revenues from which would be put in part towards deficit reduction, global health, climate change and social safety nets. The bill’s author estimates that the tax would raise around 350 billion dollars a year.

On Thursday, the United States’ widest-circulation and most mainstream newspaper, USA Today, even threw its support behind an FTT, noting that “Slap(ping) a small transaction tax on rapid trades … would be a big win for small investors, and the only people harmed would be those now putting everyone else at risk.”

E.U. lead

With Washington today overwhelmed by the final weeks of a tight presidential election, pro-FTT momentum is currently coming from within the European Union. On Friday, the finance ministers of France and Germany formally requested approval to allow nine EU countries to move forward with imposing an FTT.

An earlier attempt to push through an EU-wide FTT failed amidst strong pushback from certain members, but could now proceed in this smaller arrangement.

On Wednesday, French President Francois Hollande told the U.N. General Assembly in New York, “Today we need to … introduce a tax on financial transactions – that has already been agreed to by several European states – so that the capital movements that profit from globalisation can contribute to international development and the fight against pandemics.”

In Washington, meanwhile, current U.S. policy is traced to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who has forcefully come out against the idea of an FTT. If Barack Obama wins another term in the November elections, however, Geithner has stated that he would step down from his current position.

“There’s a good chance there will be fresh thinking on FTT in the next administration,” Sarah Anderson, with the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank here in Washington, told IPS. “Not only will there be new economic policy leaders coming in, but the international debate has changed dramatically since President Obama first took office.”


 

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The American people need to shout out that now Congress has no excuse in holding back as the EU holds its banks accountable.

We want as well to keep up the demands for recovery of massive fraud with a War on Fraud!



EU grouping gets OK for financial transaction tax

The Associated Press European Commissioner for Internal Market Michel Barnier, left, speaks with Dutch Finance Minister and newly appointed chief of the eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem during a meeting of EU finance ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013. Eleven eurozone countries seeking to unilaterally implement a financial transaction tax are expected Tuesday to receive the blessing of other European Union countries, bringing the once-controversial project one step closer to reality. At center is Thomas Weber, and member of the EU delegation. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

By JUERGEN BAETZ and DON MELVIN / Associated Press / January 22, 2013 1


BRUSSELS (AP) — A group of 11 European Union countries was given the go-ahead Tuesday to work on the introduction of a tax on financial transactions.

The tax is designed to help pay for the rescue of Europe’s banks and discourage risky trading. It would apply to anyone in the 11 countries who makes a bond or share trade or bets on the market using complex financial products called derivatives.

EU Tax Commissioner Algirdas Semeta told reporters after a meeting of the bloc’s 27 finance ministers that the decision marked a ‘‘major milestone for EU tax policies.’’

The plan is to use some of the revenue raised from the tax, which could run into tens of billions of euros, to prop up shaky banks. This would help out governments, which have had to pay for bank rescues in the past. Some supporters of the tax have also suggested that part of the revenue could help fund the EU’s budget.

‘‘The financial sector must appropriately participate in bearing the cost of the financial crisis,’’ German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a statement.

Europe’s banking industry has been one of the main causes of the euro area’s three-year financial crisis. Governments in countries such as Spain and Ireland have had to rescue their banks, which had been brought close to collapse by bad property investments. The rescues caused the governments’ levels of debt to rise to dangerously high levels.

The crisis was exacerbated by market speculators using derivatives to make risky bets on how the market in a particular product would move. The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has proposed that trades in bonds and shares be taxed at 0.1 percent and trades in derivatives at 0.01 percent.

Semeta had no immediate estimate of how much revenue the tax would generate, but he noted that the Commission had previously estimated that such a tax across the 27-nation bloc could yield €57 billion a year. The 11 nations pushing ahead represent about two-thirds of the EU’s economy, he said.

Germany, France and nine other nations had initially hoped the tax would be adopted by the entire EU. However, several countries, including Britain, home to the EU’s biggest financial hub, refused to endorse the measure amid concerns over its economic impact.

The Confederation of British Industry, a UK business lobby group, criticized Tuesday’s decision, saying the tax would be ‘‘a drag on the eurozone recovery.’’

‘‘As the UK’s largest single trading partner, a healthy European economy is in everyone’s interests so we urge participating member states to reconsider this tax,’’ it added.

The idea of a financial transaction tax was dismissed in the U.S. during the drafting of the Dodd-Frank act, the country’s largest financial regulation overhaul since the 1930s.

Last year’s deadlock over the tax opened the possibility under EU law, using the so-called enhanced cooperation mechanism, for a group of nine or more nations to go ahead separately. The countries involved are now expected to start working out detailed proposals.

The decision Tuesday cleared a legal hurdle by allowing those nations to push ahead without the backing of all 27 nations, but it did not concern the substance of the proposal.

Ireland’s Finance Minister Michael Noonan said the decision was ‘‘more about process than about the makeup or the actual relevance of the financial transaction tax.’’ Ireland currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, and Noonan chaired the meeting.

The 11 countries wanting to create a joint financial transaction tax are Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. The Netherlands, where a new government came to power last fall, might also participate at some point.

The meeting of the EU finance ministers came a day after a meeting of the eurogroup, composed of the finance ministers of the 17 EU nations that use the euro currency.

The eurogroup elected Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem (DIE-sell-bloom) as its new president, replacing Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourgish Prime Minister who held the job for eight years. The Dutchman, who is 46, has been finance minister only since November.

Dijsselbloem has a full in-tray: The need to negotiate a bailout for Cyprus, pushing forward the introduction of an EU banking union and reconciling deficit reduction in many countries with the need for policies that promote growth.

At their meeting Monday, the eurozone’s finance ministers also agreed in principle to extend maturities on some of the debt of Ireland and Portugal, both of whom have received EU bailouts.


That move, echoing a similar concession made to Greece in December, will allow Ireland ‘‘to enhance the sustainability of Irish debt and over time will cost us less,’’ Noonan said.

The decision also needed approval by the EU’s 27 finance ministers.

The EU’s monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, said both Ireland and Portugal are expected to return to the markets for their financing needs this year.

‘‘A successful return to the markets for these two countries is both in the interest of themselves and certainly in the interest of the entire European Union,’’ Rehn said.


_____________________________________________
The reason I am using European media as a comparison is that the US media will not approach the subject as a whole.  Germany and Wall Street are the ones driving the desire to implode social democracies like France, Portugal, Italy, Greece (PIGS) and they are the ones fighting any attempt to bring money back.  The UK is not part of Europe but was heavily involved in frauds of its own.  These financial stances are what has UK hesitant about joining the EURO and it is what has the EURO possibly breaking apart as the PIGS nations are refusing to allow their societies take the brunt of the fleecing by banks.

WALL STREET AND GERMANY'S DEUTSCHE BANK ARE THE SAME.  THEY STOLE ALL THE MONEY AND WANT TO KEEP IT.  SADLY FOR GERMAN CITIZENS, THEY, LIKE AMERICANS ARE BEING USED TO PAY DOWN ALL THE DEBT FROM THIS MASSIVE FRAUD SCHEME.

So, German taxpayers know if the PIGS default they will have their wealth confiscated as is happening to American citizens now!  GERMANS NEED TO HOLD THEIR BANKS ACCOUNTABLE AND ARE NOT JUST AS IN AMERICA!  We have to remember, these massive frauds not only emptied our government coffers, but coffers from countries around the world.  THIS IS WHY THE WORLD DOES NOT TRUST OR LIKE US!

Complaint to EU: German Banks Try to Torpedo Transaction Taxes

By Claus Hecking and Stefan Kaiser

DPA Frankfurt's banking skyline.

German banking associations have sent letters to the European Commission urging it to forbid the new financial transaction taxes imposed by France and Italy. Insiders believe the letters are an attempt by the banking lobby to block a planned EU-wide financial transaction tax.

____________________________________________


We have seen trillions in corporate tax breaks over these few years and we know all that money was spent expanding overseas.  We know as well that Obama and neo-liberals are bringing up the minimum wage increase to tie it to lower corporate tax rates.....THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.  Last year corporations averaged only 10% tax rate and our government coffers are starved at all levels.


NEO-LIBERALS WORK FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND WILL NOT PASS PROGRESSIVE TAX LAW.  RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE AND MAKE THESE PROGRESSIVE TAX CHANGES A STATE AND CITY ISSUE!



Progressive Principles for Tax Reform

We cannot afford to extend tax breaks for corporations or the wealthy that cripple our ability to invest in areas that expand economic growth, like infrastructure and education. Tax reform must be done in a way that raises significant revenue, protects working families and the vulnerable, and requires corporations and the wealthy to pay a fair share. 

The primary goals of comprehensive tax reform should be to progressively raise sufficient revenue to (1) make investments that will grow the economy, and (2) set us on a path for long-term deficit reduction. Low- and moderate-income Americans are already contributing to deficit reduction through the Budget Control Act spending caps and are likely to be asked to sacrifice more. Progressive tax reform is the only way that wealthy Americans can share significantly in that sacrifice. 

Rather than use the 1986 tax reform as a model, we should be taking cues from our last five balanced budgets (1969 and 1998-2001), which all required above average revenue. During these years of balance, federal revenue averaged 19.5% of GDP, substantially higher than the previous 40 year average (18% of GDP) and the pre-recession level (18.5% of GDP). However, with demographic shifts, the desperate need for job-creating investments, and the size of our current deficits, our revenue will need to be higher than even these historical levels to achieve balance. 

The writing is on the wall: a revenue-neutral approach to tax reform – on either the corporate or individual side of the tax code – is not an option. Further, so-called “dynamic scoring,” that imagines revenue out of thin air and is widely refuted by respected economists of all political affiliations, cannot be used to shirk the requirement for revenue in deficit reduction proposals. We believe that any comprehensive tax reform must include the following six principles. 

Corporate Tax Reform Principles 

1. Revenue Positive 

As the debate over our fiscal challenges proceeds, more and more constituencies have been asked to contribute to taming our deficit under the pretense of “shared sacrifice.” Yet time and time again, the corporate tax code has been given a pass. This asks nothing of corporations that continue to set near-record level profits and have largely recovered from our post-2008 economic slide, and requires the sacrifice of working families and the poor to be more severe. Plain and simple, the corporate contribution to our deficit reduction must increase from the status quo. As a share of GDP, corporate taxes have fallen from 4.7% in the 1950s to a scant 1.9% from 2000-2009. In 2007, the U.S. Treasury found that when evaluated on average corporate tax rates, the United States was second lowest among its competitors in the G8 and three percentage points below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations’ average. Just this year, CBO data show that the effective corporate tax rate dropped to 12.1%, the lowest recorded level during the past 40 years. As a share of our total revenues, corporate taxes averaged 27.6% in the 1950s and have dropped precipitously since to 10.4% from 2000-2009. This is not a fair distribution of our tax burden. 

How do we improve? We should advance the tax code’s efficiency, eliminate wasteful loopholes, broaden the base, and reduce bias towards overseas investments. However, the presumption that we should turn around and shovel this revenue out the door through lower marginal rates – particularly when we have huge needs for investment in areas such as infrastructure and education – is simply one we cannot afford. 

2. Promote Responsible Corporate Behavior 

In addition to being a means through which the private sector contributes to public goods and societal needs, the corporate tax code is meant to serve as a tool to fuel smart investments, and an economic instrument to incent clear, positive objectives. Comprehensive corporate tax reform should retain those expenditures that have proven 

to be an efficient and worthwhile investment in our nation’s future. This includes, but is not limited to, incentives to hire disadvantaged workers, invest in distressed communities such as the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, bring jobs home from overseas, help small businesses and promote clean energy and energy efficiency. 

Further, we must eliminate tax loopholes that encourage reckless and undesirable behavior such as the overuse of debt financing and tax sheltering, and explore commonsense revenue streams like putting a price on carbon pollution or enacting a small financial transactions tax to reduce market volatility. We should also repeal the more than $95 billion in special tax breaks we are scheduled to give away to the established, highly profitable fossil fuel industry over the next ten years. 

3. A Global System that Works for the American People 

In addressing our serious revenue gap, we should reduce – not increase – the tax code’s bias towards overseas investment. Rather than fixate on top marginal rates, corporate tax reform should focus on what’s actually broken: our partial-worldwide system relying on deferral has not kept pace with the globalized business community. The status quo allows multinational corporations to achieve extremely low worldwide and domestic effective tax rates, encourages shifting of profits and investment overseas, and costs billions each year in US tax revenues. To harmonize 21st century commerce with our revenue needs, we should modernize our tax code by either ending deferral (and the excessive tax avoidance this encourages) or adopting a global minimum tax (rendering deferral largely irrelevant). 

Yet some large corporate interests have marched to Capitol Hill advocating for a tax system that would worsen the tax code’s bias towards foreign profits and investment, and increase the deficit. They claim that the only way for the United States to remain globally competitive is to transition to a territorial tax system, which would levy taxes only on earnings in the country in which they are reported and exempt corporations’ offshore profits from US taxes. Their solution is wrong and ignores some very hard facts. 

Such a system would increase the incentives and opportunities for multinationals to shift profits and investment offshore. While that might be good for corporate shareholders, it would not be good for America's workers. The non-partisan Congressional Research Service told Congress last year that a territorial system “would make foreign investment more attractive,” causing investment to flow abroad and reducing wages for US workers. 

Regardless of rumor or political agenda, the United States remains the preeminent location for businesses in the global economy. According to the World Bank, the United States ranks first among large countries in the ease of doing business, which included more comprehensive measures of business-friendliness including regulation burden, property rights, access to credit, and contract enforcement, to name a few. There is no need to cater to the demands or large corporations, particularly when it would devastatingly undercut the investments we need to make in our infrastructure and human capital. 

Individual Tax Reform Principles 

1. Restore and Improve Progressivity 

It is a bedrock principle of fairness that those with higher incomes should pay progressively higher tax rates. Any tax reform must ensure that each fifth of the income distribution (as well as the top 1% and top 0.1%) should have a higher average effective tax rate than the income group below. Across the board tax rate cuts are regressive because a 20% tax cut for a millionaire – even as a share of income – amounts to a far greater benefit than a 20% cut for a hardworking low income American. 

To maintain or strengthen progressivity, we should end one of the leading contributors to after-tax income inequality in this country, the special tax breaks for investment income. Workers who get their salaries from wages often pay a higher effective tax rate than wealthy individuals like Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett who make most of their income from selling stocks and bonds or from dividends. This undermines the basic tenant that average tax rates should rise with income. In fact, the richest 1% of taxpayers receives 71% of all capital gains, while the bottom 80% of taxpayers receives only 10% of capital gains. We should treat all capital gains and qualified dividends as ordinary income, an approach President Reagan once signed into law. 

We must also strengthen the estate tax, which is the single most progressive tax. The weakening of estate tax requirements over time has contributed to expanding income inequality for the top 1%. The current estate tax rules should expire and, at a minimum, we should return to 2009 levels as President Obama has proposed, which would impact only the wealthiest three out of every 1,000 estates. 

2. Fair Rates for the Wealthiest Taxpayers 

We must ensure that the wealthiest Americans are paying their fair share of taxes. While we applaud success, when the wealthy get tax breaks they don’t need and the country can’t afford, the middle class and working families make up the difference in cuts to programs like education and Medicare. What’s more, the income gains of the last three decades have not been distributed fairly. The wealthiest Americans’ have seen an outsized growth in income (155% income gains for the top one percent of earners compared to 41% income gains for the bottom 80 percent) and tax reform should not exacerbate these trends of gross income inequality. As studies continue to bear out, high levels of income inequality weaken the economic environment for all Americans. 

As a first and minimum step, instead of giving an average tax break of $160,000 to millionaires, the Bush-era tax rates on the richest 2% should return to the rates we had when Bill Clinton was president and the economy was booming. As a recent Congressional Research Service report found, reductions in the top tax rates have little association with economic growth, although it found these reductions were associated with increasing income disparities. 

There is a meaningful difference between a multimillionaire and a family earning $250,000 a year that our tax code fails to recognize. The simplest and most direct way to address our revenue needs while avoiding undue burdens on some upper-middle class Americans is to add additional tax brackets for the extremely wealthy as proposed by Rep. Schakowsky (H.R. 1124). Because the root of our tax code’s complexity stems from the web of deductions and tax expenditures, not tax rates, these new brackets could help raise additional revenue and improve equity without unduly hampering economic efficiency. 

3. Reexamine Expenditures that Benefit the Wealthy; Protect those that Help Working Families, the Poor, and Seniors 

Tax policy is economic policy, and tax expenditures are a form of spending. We must prioritize our spending through the tax code to remove expenditures that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, while protecting those that create ladders of opportunity, reward work, and protect the poor. 

Subsidies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy should be made fairer and more efficient by targeting them better, such as by transitioning to tax credits. At the very least, we should cap the benefit of itemized deductions for families with incomes over $250,000 at 28%, as outlined in the President’s budget. Only one-third of taxpayers itemize their deductions because the majority of Americans claim the standard deduction. Further, the value of a deduction corresponds to an individual’s marginal tax rate, making itemization highly regressive. 

We support tax expenditures that increase access to health care, homeownership, and a secure retirement. Tax credits that benefit seniors, the poor, or working families – such as the child tax credit – should also be protected with their refundability maintained. We support maintaining the improvements made under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to tax credits targeting working families, including the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child and Dependent Care Credit, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit. In addition, as our economy continues to recover, we support tax credits to create consumer demand and assist low- and middle-income families such as the successful Making Work Pay tax credit. 

We also must not fall for the trap of agreeing to a tax reform framework that sets a goal of locking in regressive and costly rate reductions while leaving for later which tax expenditures would be targeted. This would either result in lower overall revenue or would put at risk tax expenditures that benefit the poor and the middle class, and neither is acceptable. 




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December 30th, 2013

12/30/2013

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EDUCATION POLICY IN AMERICA BECOMES ALL ABOUT LABOR AND CORPORATE PROFITS.  DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND LICENSING REGULATORY AGENCIES IN STATES ARE NOW TIED WITH STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION----

AND AS WITH CORPORATIZATION OF PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES, ALL THE PUBLIC MONEY FOR EDUCATION IS PAYING HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY TO ADMINISTRATIVE SALARIES, PRIVATE CONSULTING FEES, AND EDUCATION BUSINESSES LIKE PEARSON.




What needs to change asks the panel below--------the politicians pushing this mess.  We need to send these pols packing so we can go back to building strong public education!  Please listen to this video-taped panel on education policy and ask----why are we not having these conversations in Maryland?

Why are these education professionals shouting that Race to the Top is bad, and in Maryland the education leaders are saying the opposite? 

IT IS WHO THE GOVERNOR AND MAYOR APPOINT IN EDUCATION LEADERSHIP.  SEE WHY DEMOCRATIC STRONGHOLDS LIKE BALTIMORE AND NOW PRINCE GEORGES COUNTY HAS LOST ITS ABILITY TO ELECT SCHOOL BOARD OFFICIALS! 

When school administrators are making hundreds of thousands of dollars and have little background in education.....when billions are being spent in education businesses that make huge profits with no positive effect----you see a fleecing of our education system.


CTU President Karen Lewis joins us to discuss the effectiveness of No Child Left Behind.


‪#‎1u‬ The Professors | Dec. 22, 2013 - No Child Left Behind: Time for a Change? | WYCC PBS...video.wycc.orgCTU President Karen Lewis joins us to discuss the effectiveness of No Child Left Behind.
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If you look at the article below this one you will see all of the educational programming that leads to high-skilled jobs and education readiness for future higher education are being dismantled supposedly because of costs constraints but it isn't a lack of money, it is where the money is being funneled.  If public money is going to replace a businesses human resources department and pay for ordinary job training for an individual each time he/she changes jobs, you are not going to have money to expose these students to more sophisticated skills development.

What we want to do is allow unions and labor organizations that have always handled this take that expense and connect our K-12 to all of the corporate facilities built on public university campuses.  Those hundreds of billions used to build 'world-class' campuses need to come back to the communities and tying them to our schools is a first step!


Budget cuts kill acclaimed space program for students at Northeast High

Several NASA astronauts visited the program over the years; at right is a photograph of astronaut Michael Anderson, who died in the Columbia accident in 2003. The closure is "really, really unfortunate," said junior Leon Frame, who was an astronaut this month in the final simulated mission. (ERIC MENCHER / File Photograph)GALLERY: ERIC MENCHER. In this photo, John Schneider (left) and… By Kristen A. Graham, Inquirer Staff WriterPosted: December 24, 2013

For 50 years, Northeast High School students have taken part in sophisticated simulated space missions that halted asteroids speeding toward Earth, repaired satellites, and landed on the moon.

That era is over.

Last week, the nationally acclaimed Space Research Center after-school program - and dozens of other academic clubs - were eliminated, yet more victims of the Philadelphia School District's ongoing budget cuts.

"It's really, really unfortunate," Northeast junior Leon Frame said. He was an astronaut this month on the program's final mission.

The Space Research Center program, known as SPARC, was just one of dozens of extracurricular activities dropped at Northeast because of fiscal pressures. Debate, dance, Science Olympiad, and other clubs also were cut.

Sports are funded by the district's central office and were not affected.

The academic clubs had operated with no budget since September, principal Linda Carroll said, and teachers volunteered in the hope money could be found to keep activities going.

But recently, "the people who have been running things said, 'As much as we want to do it, we can't,' " Carroll said. "I don't fault them. People get tired of being disrespected. They bank on our passion."

Carroll hopes to restore the clubs, and laments their loss.

"I feel so badly," she said. "The kids are the ones who are suffering."

The space program, which had 120 student participants this year, has a rich history.

In the early 1960s, at the height of the space race, physics teacher Robert A.G. Montgomery launched it to pique students' interest when the United States was in a frenzy to beef up science education. Early flight simulations happened on the auditorium stage, with a rudimentary capsule made of lumber.

NASA donated money early on, and it recognized the program on multiple occasions. Northeast's Medical, Engineering and Aerospace magnet program - which still exists - began because of it.

Eventually, a separate wing was built for the after-school club and the magnet program, with elaborate capsules built on site.


Several NASA astronauts have visited the program, and one of them, Philadelphia native Chris Ferguson, was honorary flight director and teleconferenced with students in 2007 and 2008.

Students studied engineering, robotics, computer science, and trained in CPR and first aid. Their work culminated every year in a two-day simulated space mission that required months of planning.

Funding the program has been a continual problem, said retired teacher Anthony Matarazzo, who served as its director from 1991 to 2005.

"They almost did away with it for the last few years," Matarazzo said. "They did flights, but teachers were volunteering. Each year, there was a little less."

The loss of the space program is a loss for Philadelphia, Matarazzo said. It drew students from across the city.

"It was a marvelous program. The kids who went through this program have become unbelievable assets to this country," he said. Alumni include engineers, professors, surgeons, computer scientists, and others.

Senior Jeremy Cruz, one of the program's managers, was crestfallen at the news of its elimination, news he had to deliver to his classmates in an emotional meeting last week.

"We were heartbroken, all of us, even the teachers," Cruz said.

He and others are frustrated that academic clubs were cut but athletics remain, and they have vowed to fight.


"We were angry. We were sad. But we weren't just going to take this sitting down," Cruz said.

Students have reached out to Mayor Nutter and others in the hope someone can help. Cruz estimated it would take several thousand dollars to restore the program.

Cruz's mother, Lisa Maldonado, knows what the space research program has done for her son. He's not into sports, but this activity gave him a chance to shine.

"This teaches them about teamwork, and they loved doing it - they loved the flights, everything," Maldonado said. "To take this away from them is such a shame."

The loss of the space program is a symptom of a larger problem. Systemwide, massive money troubles have stripped schools of staff, programs, and services. Many schools have not run clubs this year.

At Northeast, the city's largest school with more than 3,000 pupils, things are so dire there was no cash to pay for batteries for students' calculators. A fund-raiser was held to drum up the $1,600 needed to keep the calculators powered.

Principal Carroll knows what losing the space program and other clubs means.

"If you want children to get a quality education, you can't just talk about it - you have to back it up," she said. "We want to keep their interest, but we just don't have the funding for these extracurriculars."

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One of the biggest complaints I hear from people in the workplace is that these programs do not emphasize workplace safety and teach employees labor laws and OSHA safety standards so we have workers entering the workplace without knowledge of these labor regulations and agency requirements.  Accidents and on-the-job injuries are at a record high and people do not feel safe while working their jobs because of this lack of readiness.  Apprenticeships would normally last several years where these job training programs are often several months at best.

So, as corporations disregard OSHA and labor law, as the Federal agencies tasked with overseeing workplace violations, this is another step towards ending New Deal labor protections.  In Maryland, the DLLR has no operations looking at workplace abuse, employee exploitation, and workplace safety......AND THAT IS THE AGENCY THAT DOES THIS.

We think that DLLR needs to spend its time and resources doing the job it was tasked to do and allow corporations and unions to train people for specific job readiness!



Putting employers in the driver's seat for job training New Md. program, other efforts across the country ask businesses to work together to close gaps in job seekers' skills


By Jamie Smith Hopkins, The Baltimore Sun 9:25 a.m. EST, December 29, 2013

Even as the manufacturing industry sheds jobs overall, a number of firms in Maryland want to hire — and aren't having an easy time of it.

That's what the Maryland Manufacturing Extension Partnership heard when the nonprofit talked to 40 employers this year. Most of the entry-level people the firms bring on don't work out, in part because it can be a culture shock to take a job in manufacturing for the first time, said Brian Sweeney, executive director of the manufacturing-assistance organization.

A new state program aims to fill such gaps with training designed and launched by employers. Twenty-nine groups in a variety of business sectors will get funding to analyze their needs and plan training next year, including the "boot camp" prep course envisioned by manufacturers, the state plans to announce Monday.

The Employment Advancement Right Now program, called EARN, is part of a national movement to get employers more deeply involved in efforts to develop a skilled workforce — a shift that has gathered steam in recent years as federal funding for training has shrunk.

Elisabeth A. Sachs, director of the EARN program for the state Labor Department, describes the benefits of the approach.

"Instead of … 'train and pray' — you sort of throw the money out there, hope people get a credential and then find a job — we're starting with strategically getting employers in an industry to the table and saying, 'What skill sets are missing, what curriculum changes, what on-the-job training, what expert teachers do you need to bring in … to get the skilled worker at the end of the investment?' "

The nation's major training programs in the 1970s, '80s and most of the '90s took a worker-centric approach.

"Very little was focused on understanding what employers needed," said Fred Dedrick, executive director of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, which aims to get industry more involved in training.

The 15-year-old Workforce Investment Act system requires states to appoint oversight boards made up mostly of employers. But Dedrick said that usually produces general ideas about needs — which he said is "not enough to build a program around."

Enter the industry partnerships, in which employers and industry groups in the same sector come up with specific plans for getting more trained job candidates. A growing number of states are encouraging and funding them.

"It's a real shift in the way we're doing occupational training in communities all over the country," said Rachel Gragg, federal policy director with the National Skills Coalition, which advocates for increased access to training.

Some Maryland employers organized years ago. The Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare, for instance, was launched in 2005 with funding from local foundations to work on creating a bigger pipeline of trained entry-level workers.

In other cases, groups that help low-income people teamed with employers to make training more effective. Halethorpe-based Vehicles for Change, working with like-minded nonprofits including the Center for Urban Families and Catholic Charities of Baltimore, launched an auto detailing training program this fall with assistance from a local detailing firm.

Cockeysville-based Diamond Detail helped with the curriculum, donated equipment, trained the trainer and offered suggestions about how to organize the work area.

"Since they helped us set the program up, we're giving them first crack at our recently trained detailers," said Philip C. Holmes, director of the new Academy for Automotive Careers at Vehicles for Change.

Chuck Heinle, Diamond Detail's president, said he's hired three graduates already. The 190-employee company is growing fast and needs a pipeline of new employees. Heinle likes getting them already trained and with a reference from Vehicles for Change. The organization can monitor work habits, because students who finish the four-week training program temporarily stay on as paid apprentices.

Vehicles for Change is working to get other employers involved in the program — if only to come in and watch participants clean, polish and repair scratches in cars donated for low-income families.

"Our key strategy is to get the company to visit and see the quality of the work our students can do, and then our theory is, if they can see the demonstrated skills, the company may overlook some of the issues that our students are dealing with," Holmes said.

Homelessness, for instance. Four of the program's five apprentices are living in shelter arrangements such as transitional housing.

Tyrone Carter, one of the apprentices, lives at Christopher Place Employment Academy in Baltimore, a residential program run by Catholic Charities. As he cleaned a slightly dented Nissan last week, first with water and then with clay to pull out stubborn dirt and dust, Carter said he has two jobs now — detailer during the week and security guard in a homeless shelter on weekends.

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If you look at the number of organizations tied to this nonprofit......many of them corporate representatives with some community organizations created just for the job training process.....and think to yourself

WE GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL AND EITHER WENT TO COLLEGE OR WAS HIRED TO A JOB AND TRAINED EITHER BY THAT BUSINESSES' HUMAN RESOURCES OR A LABOR APPRENTICESHIP.  WE GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE AND IF YOU HAD A DEGREE YOU WENT INTO MIDDLE-MANAGEMENT OR TO A PROFESSIONAL POSITION.

There was no need for this long list of organizations all taking public money to promote some kind of job training.  It is ridiculous and will lead to public money once going to strong advanced education now going to just placed people into individual jobs!


National Skills Coalition



Our Mission.

National Skills Coalition organizes broad-based coalitions seeking to raise the skills of America’s workers across a range of industries. We advocate for public policies that invest in what works, as informed by our members’ real-world expertise. And we communicate these goals to an American public seeking a vision for a strong U.S. economy that allows everyone to be part of its success.



How We Advance our Mission:

We organize.  We build multi-stakeholder coalitions that demonstrate broad-based support for a new national skills policy. We help our diverse coalition partners develop a common skills agenda that serves the common good. We then bring the real-world expertise of these workforce development practitioners into policy discussions.

We advocate.  We actively work to change policies. We do not focus on a narrow set of policies that impact a single stakeholder group, rather, we advocate across policy silos, ensuring that we’re helping all workers at every point in their careers. We also connect federal and state advocacy, providing policy expertise to our coalition partners to support their efforts both in Washington, DC, and in their state capitals.

We communicate.  We keep our members informed about policy efforts at the state and federal levels, providing timely and actionable information. We also reach out to people outside the workforce development field, helping our members reach new audiences and thereby better engage the American public.
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Below you see the words of educators in NYC in regards to Bloomberg and Wall Street's attempts to kill public education there.  Baltimore is a NYC satellite as Johns Hopkins is Bloomberg's to run.  We are seeing education policy straight from what is spoken of below brought to you by Alonzo and his privatizing Baltimore City School Board appointed by O'Malley.  Remember, the governor is appointing because Rawlings-Blake handed Baltimore City Schools to the state.

We need our schools back in Baltimore's hands and a mayor who works for the public interest and not Wall Street to reverse all these really bad policies as is happening in NYC.


Outsourcing Public Education: Things Fall Apart With The Incremental Privatization of NYC Public Schools
Jan. 27, 2007
1:19 pm
by Leo Casey


Edwize has obtained a copy of the RFP [Request for Proposal] for “Partnership School Support” that the New York City Department of Education has hidden from the general public in a remote precinct of its website accessible only to private vendors with passwords. In it one finds the details of one of the central components of the latest structural reorganization Chancellor Klein want to impose on New York City public schools.

What is remarkable about the RFP is the general plan to outsource to these private ‘partnership’ entities virtually all of the educational support functions traditionally fulfilled, for better or for worse, by the DOE. Instructional program, professional development, special education: all of these and more will now be organized and supported by the Partnerships. And in contrast to the current intermediaries such as New Visions and Urban Assembly, this RFP invites ‘for profit’ EMOs [Educational Maintenance Organizations, modeled after Health Maintenance Organizations or HMOs] like Edison Schools and Victory Schools to become Partnerships.

Corporate outsourcing operates generally on the theory that an organization should focus on its core mission, and turn over ancillary functions which are not central to its work to other institutions to run. Applied to education, such a theory would have an entity like the Department of Education outsourcing functions like transportation, food services and facilities, in order to focus on what is central to its mission, teaching and learning. One could argue that the DOE need not have top of the line luxury buses moving children or serve the most nutritious, most appealing food in its school cafeterias, and so could afford to outsource such services, but that it needs to provide world class, quality education in its classrooms.


But what the DOE proposes to do here is the inverse of this corporate model of outsourcing. They are taking the core mission of the Department of Education — the promotion of excellent teaching and learning which is at the center of any education worthy of that name — and are outsourcing it. Such a move is a tacit admission that those who make the decisions at Tweed are themselves incapable of providing educational leadership. They lack the most elemental understanding of how the world of instruction works, and so propose structural change upon structural change, with every one avoiding the substance of teaching and learning like it were the plague. If anything, they fear educational expertise, for it exposes their own lack of knowledge and leadership: just look at an organizational strategy which has systematically purged professional educators from the top echelons of the Department of Education. With this week’s retirement of Rose DePinto, in part a reaction to yet another structural revolution bringing more institutional chaos and instability, there remains in the inner councils of Tweed literally a single educator who knows what it takes to teach real classes and lead real schools — Eric Nadelstern, the last of the educational Mohicans. There is a sort of perverse logic to turning over to private entities what the current leadership at Tweed is so clearly incapable of doing itself, as a result of its own design.

The permanent revolution of endless structural reorganizations brought to us by Chancellor Klein has been bereft, from day one, of any educational vision and any instructional strategy for New York City schools. Instead, an obsession with structure — at its root, an obsession with power as an end in itself — has been the motivating spirit. The logic of this structure driven quest is the devolution not of educational decision making power and authority, but of accountability. The goal is to divest the Chancellor and the Department of Education of responsibility for what goes on in its own schools. Five years in charge, longer than any other Chancellor in two plus decades, and Joel Klein still blames everyone but himself for the shortcomings of New York City public schools. Now he wants to organize the entire school system around that political strategy of accountability and responsibility avoidance. A proper name for these perpetual organizational revolution and obsession with structure would be “Classroom Last.”

In this regard the details of the RFP are telling. Schools do not get to choose their partnerships — they can simply state their preferences, and the DOE makes the choices. Just as importantly, schools do not get to drop their partnerships if they find them useless or worse — only the DOE can do that. There is no system of accountability for the partnerships, no metrics by which their performance will be measured, no responsibility for their actual work in their schools — the best one can find is some vague language of how the DOE will canvas the schools to obtain their opinion on the quality of services provided. Most significantly, there is no responsibility and accountability for the Department of Education in Klein’s brave, new world. It turns over all of its educational support functions to the partnerships, and leaves for itself only the training of principals [the Leadership Academy], the setting of standards, the operation of the accountability system and actual decision making authority. All responsibility, all accountability rests with the schools.

This educational dystopia, one which Klein promoted in the recent Tough Choices, Tough Talks report, would remake public education in the image of what the Bush administration and the Louisiana Governor have done to the post-Katrina New Orleans public schools. The results in New Orleans should give anyone who cares about the education of children – and especially, children living in poverty who are at most risk for academic failure – serious pause about conducting more experiments in this vein. Make no mistake about it: we are clear that the management of our public schools needs to be reformed, and that real decision making power needs to be devolved to the schools, in the hands of school leaders, teachers, and parents. We need real empowerment of schools, not rhetorical empowerment smokescreens. We need public schools accountable to the public, not outsourced to private entities in a perpetual deferral of accountability by its top leadership. Klein’s “Classroom Last” will not accomplish these ends, but only make matters worse. It — and the New Orleans public schools — is a world perhaps best captured in the title of Chinua Achebe’s novel of post-colonial Africa, borrowed from a William Butler Yeats’ poem: The center can not hold. Things fall apart.

The way forward for New York City public schools is not putting up for sale the leadership of teaching and learning in New York City public schools. Rather, it is the replacement of a Chancellor of New York City public schools incapable of providing educational leadership with a Chancellor who can do precisely that. Since you can’t lead us in teaching and learning, Joel Klein, step aside for someone who can, someone who will accept responsibility and embrace accountability for himself and his administration, someone who will set about restoring the professional educational talent you have driven from the management of New York City public schools, someone who will empower New York City public schools to do their best.


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LET'S LOOK AT ONE ISSUE AS REGARDS EDUCATION AND JOB TRAINING......PRE-K. 

Now, pre-K is good, we like more money for pre-K right?  Only, none of the money gets to the classroom.....it is all administrative and building structures.

JOB TRAINING IS STARTING IN PRE-K WITH THESE NEO-LIBERALS.


Keep in mind the panel in the education discussion above stated clearly that none of the funding was getting to the schools and all are being sent to administrative agencies not even connected to education.  Keep in mind as well that Maryland has a long history of being at the low end of all social welfare funding.  Look at where we were in 2004.  Now, in Baltimore with tiered per-student funding and underserved and special needs children getting the least----most of our schools cannot even afford to buy toilet paper (unless a private corporation has partnered and donates tons of money).

I showed you how private non-profits are regarded as offering little help and actually appear to be fronts to move money.  Now, that's not ALL private non-profits, but those attached to these education reforms are just that.  From Special Needs to Wellness private non-profits, parents are seeing nothing useful from them and are shouting they are taking away all public voice on these issues.  INDEED, THAT IS WHAT THESE PRIVATE NON-PROFITS COMING WITH THIS REFORM ARE MEANT TO DO!

Look at yet another education issue that will take public education money and consider where they are going to spend that money.  Remember, the goal with education privatization is to create a Pre-K - college tracking of students through testing and assignment to vocational tracks from that testing.  So, we can bet that the pre-K funding listed below in the Federal stimulus is all about creating these education testing and structures for pre-K. 

THE CLASSROOMS THEMSELVES WILL GET ALMOST NOTHING......WHICH IS WHAT THE PANEL ABOVE IS REFERRING.




Costs Per Child for Early ChildhoodEducation and CareComparing Head Start, CCDF Child Care, andPrekindergarten/Preschool Programs

(2003/2004)Douglas J. BesharovJustus A. MyersandJeffrey S. MorrowAugust 31, 2007Welfare Reform AcademyUniversity of MarylandAmerican Enterprise Institute1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.Washington, D.C. 20036www.welfareacademy.org


Of those states with a prekindergarten or preschool program, state spending varied substantially, from a low of about $721 in Maryland to a high of about $9,305 in New Jersey(about $697 and about $9,000, respectively, in 2004 dollars)




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Remember how casinos and their profits were going to bring money to education coffers and we see it all being diverted to development projects around the casinos?  Job training for casino workers is education they say!  That is what is happening with all of the funding below.  It sounds great that funds are going to underserved schools, or funding head start but what are these private non-profits offering?

As we see with after-school programs attached to underserved schools.....it is more of the worst in education environment you can provide for students.  Pre-K will be more of the same.


DEMAND THAT RACE TO THE TOP AND EDUCATION FUNDING GO TO STRENGTHEN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND NOT BUILD A SYSTEM OF PRIVATE NON-PROFITS SERVING AS SCHOOL SUBSTITUTES!

The Stimulus Package: Education and Job Training By FARHANA HOSSAIN, AMANDA COX, JOHN McGRATH and STEPHAN WEITBERG



Category Programs Cost

Education and Job Training; Aid to States Help states prevent cuts to essential services like educationmore » $53.6 billion

Education and Job Training; Aid to Individuals Increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500, from $4,850 to $5,350 $15.6 billion

Education and Job Training; Tax Cuts for Individuals Expand higher education tax creditsmore » $13.9 billion

Education and Job Training Provide additional money to schools serving low-income childrenmore » $13.0 billion

Education and Job Training Provide additional money for special educationmore » $12.2 billion

Aid to States; Education and Job Training Create new bonds for improvements in public educationmore » $10.9 billion

Education and Job Training Finance job training programsmore » $4.0 billion

Education and Job Training Increase financing for Head Start and Early Head Startmore » $2.1 billion

Education and Job Training Finance technology upgrades in schoolsmore » $650 million

Education and Job Training; Aid to States Help states and local school districts track student data and improve teacher qualitymore » $550 million

Education and Job Training; Health Train primary health care providers, including doctors and nursesmore » $500 million

Education and Job Training; Energy; Unemployment Train workers for careers in energy efficiency and renewable energy fields $500 million

Education and Job Training
; Aid to States; Unemployment Help states find jobs for unemployed workers $500 million Education and Job Training Provide additional money for College Work-Study program $200 million


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If you look at Baltimore City schools all of the education programs having to do with students becomes attached to private non-profits, yet if you look below at the wealthy Montgomery County where democratic institutions still work-----the public schools are the ones getting the funding and growing strong public schools.

Baltimore City schools are largely charters and vocational academies and private non-profits control all student enrichment......only many of the families are not feeling the enrichment.  After school programs are largely just more of the reading and math online training that fills the public schools in the city. 

REMEMBER HOW THE PANEL ABOVE DESCRIBED THE TOTAL EMPHASIS ON READING AND MATH TO THE DETRIMENT OF ALL OTHER SUBJECTS?  THAT IS WHAT WE HAVE IN BALTIMORE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.



Montgomery County
Grantee: Montgomery County Community Action Agency


Delegate Agency:

  • Montgomery County Public Schools
______________________
Now, we know the reason Baltimore City as with other urban schools like Chicago and Philadelphia do not get the money Montgomery County does is that the majority of students are underserved and special needs.  The funding is being kept from these 'public' schools and placed in the hands of selected charters and religious organizations for the most part.  The programs that these groups offer are often tied with the national education businesses pushing privately developed programs.  Where an individual school designs each program to fit its community's needs.

For those thinking this is happening only in poor schools think again......middle-class schools are getting these canned programs as well.


Head Start The Y of Central Maryland

is one of the largest providers of Head Start services in Maryland. We are the Grantee for Head Start in Baltimore County and are a Delegate of the Baltimore City Head Start program. Our main objective is to prepare young, economically disadvantaged children for success in school and life. We provide comprehensive early intervention to low-income children and their families and help support parents as the first and primary educator of their children. Collectively, we serve more than 950 infants, toddlers and preschool children through our Head Start programs.



Baltimore City
Grantee: Baltimore City Head Start/Mayor's Office of Human Services 


Delegate Agencies:

  • Baltimore Metropolitan Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc
  • Dayspring Head Start
  • Emily Price Jones Head Start
  • Morgan State University Head Start
  • St. Bernadine's Head Start
  • St. Jerome’s Head Start
  • St. Veronica’s Head Start
  • St. Vincent De Paul Head Start
  • Umoja Head Start Academy
  • Union Baptist/Harvey Johnson Head Start
_______________________________________________
As you see  below all of this is tied with private corporate non-profits and you can believe that Maryland is just the same.  We do not have the media coverage on this until after things happen......but it will be the same as Johns Hopkins is behind Baltimore's education policy and they are neo-cons just as in Georgia.

Posted: 11:20 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, 2013

All eyes on pre-k when Arne Duncan and U.S. business leaders converge here Monday

By Maureen Downey



Stephanie Blank is the chairman of the board of directors of GEEARS, the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students. Carol Tome is the Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President, Corporate Services of The Home Depot. 

They wrote this guest column to highlight Monday's 2013 National Business Leader Summit in Atlanta where U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will discuss the importance of investment in early learning to strengthen the economy and global competitiveness. 

 The summit, hosted by ReadyNation-America’s Promise Alliance and the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students (GEEARS), will bring together business executives and public officials to discuss support for early learning to build the nation’s workforce and strengthen the economy.

***********************************************************************
Math Curriculum for Special Ed aligned to Common Core Standardswww.ablenetinc.com/
Curriculum/Equals-Mathematics-Program 

Equals is a Pre K-12 curriculum that provides the best in mathematics instruction for educators who work with special needs students or in alternative education programs.


_____________________________________________

This is what vocational tracking gives you and in Chicago it starts with pre-K.  Remember, Arne Duncan and Obama come from Chicago and pushed this last decade on the citizens of Chicago and it is now being exported.  We know how much all parents and families are shouting against these reforms in Chicago and NYC.


It is not only the poor shouting so do not assume this is happening only in poor areas......it is happening to middle-class schools as well.  I Maryland, Baltimore is building a private structure for schools that will be exported to the state once finished


Cramming for kindergarten testsParents hiring tutors to prep preschoolers for CPS selective-enrollment exam

February 14, 2011|By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Tribune reporter
    •  

To test into some of Chicago's top schools, incoming kindergartners must be able to do more than just count to 10 or rattle off the alphabet.

They could be asked to identify trapezoids, figure out how many cookies they'd have if Mom put two more on their plate, demonstrate advanced literacy skills and, for gifted programs, be able to infer relationships, recognize patterns and predict what comes next.

You can probably predict what comes next yourself: With 3,337 applications filed for about 500 seats in Chicago Public Schools' classical and gifted kindergarten programs next fall, parents are helping their preschoolers cram for the tests.

"It's just yet another example that the country has gone test crazy," said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a national nonprofit that advocates for other methods of assessing young children. "This sort of insanity testing produces test coaching for little kids and gaming of the system by parents and others to figure out what's on the test and get their kid a leg up. We're not letting kids be kids, and we're making them into little Einsteins."

But with low-performing neighborhood schools an unattractive option and the cost of some private schools out of reach, many parents see CPS' selective enrollment programs as the best public education option in the city. As kindergarten is an entry year for most of those programs, many parents are hiring private tutors, researching tests used in other large urban school systems, finding age-appropriate questions online and doing whatever else it takes to get their kids on the right track early.

"I was blissfully naive about how this all worked when my older daughter tested for first grade," said Shannan Bunting. Even though with no special preparation her daughter made it into Decatur Classical Elementary, a top-scoring school, "we realized we couldn't do that for our second child and just hope to be lucky," she said.

This year she hired a former Montessori teacher to tutor her preschooler on everything from learning continents to sounding out words.



On our newsroom blog Trib Nation, how a conversation with parents became a sidebar on how to prepare kids for these tests. Such a move would not be unusual in New York, where parents have for years hired tutors and paid upward of $1,000 for "kindercramming" boot camps for 3- and 4-year-olds, but in Chicago it's a new phenomenon.

Although a test prep company called SelectivePrep offers courses for sixth-graders and up for admissions to top-scoring middle and high school programs, nothing similar exists for kindergarten.

And getting a child in a school for that first year can help them ultimately secure spots in subsequent years, which is becoming increasingly difficult. This year, CPS has 13,058 applications on file for approximately 1,150 seats in classical and gifted elementary schools. Some of the best schools have found themselves rejecting students who score as high as the 98th percentile on entrance exams.

CPS officials don't encourage prepping children for the tests because it skews the results, said Abigayil Joseph, head of CPS' Office of Academic Enhancement.

"We want children to come to the table with their natural ability, without having been prepared," she said. "That's how we find the best match. We don't want them to come in and do well because they've been prepped, but then be in an environment that's two grades above their level."

But that doesn't stop parents from trying to do what they consider best for their kids. Some even wonder why CPS doesn't follow New York's example and tell parents which test they use.

"Why is it that there's so much secrecy about it?" asked Gail Wilson, who hired a tutor to work with her two daughters to prepare for gifted testing. "They tell you (that) you can't prepare, but you can."

Author Karen Quinn, who parlayed her extensive research and her personal experience into a popular book, "Testing for Kindergarten," agrees with those parents.

"So much of it is exposure to concepts," said Quinn, who sells a $300 Candyland-like test-prep game she developed. "If they're practicing the kinds of questions that are on these kinds of tests, they will be more prepped than a child that goes in cold."

Quinn said her game can help spark the critical thinking parts of the brain and gets children familiar with answering test questions similar to those used for gifted programs. She also offers daily questions and tips to people who pay $5 a month to access her website, testingmom.com. More than 1,000 Chicago-area parents have joined.

Tutor Lemi Erinkitola started a tutoring company for kids as young as 3, preparing children, mostly on the South Side, for CPS' admissions tests. She said that when she went through the process with her own three children, she found few resources.


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December 28th, 2013

12/28/2013

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DEMOCRATS FEELING LIKE NOT COMING TO THE POLLS IN 2014-------THE YEAR THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS WILL HIT?  REALLY?????  STOP ALLOWING THE NEO-CON/NEO-LIBERAL PROPAGANDA KILL THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY! 

RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE AND MAKE POLITICAL ACTION YOUR NEW YEARS RESOLUTION!


WE CAN STILL REVERSE THIS!!!!

DO NOT THINK THIS IS HARD------IT IS VERY BASIC AND VERY EASY!  EASY PEASY, ALL WE NEED DO IS RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE


This is the next stage in fear as the policies neo-liberals have pushed are republican make democratic voters mad----where are they to go? See why republicans pols are bashing RomneyCare and calling it socialist, health policy written by conservative think tanks? They know that their constituents would not have allowed health care be taken from them either. THIS IS A PROPAGANDA GAME. BOTH SIDES OF LABOR AND JUSTICE ARE BETRAYED BY THEIR POLS IN OFFICE. Labor and justice must educate families and friends as to the need to run and vote for labor and justice and get republican workers on board with labor and justice democrats! Workers in the south know change is needed.....let's get them on board for democratic labor and justice candidates!!! The Tea Party did this with small business people rising up against naked capitalist neo-cons consolidating small businesses out of business.....we need to get all workers on board with labor and justice candidates!

Poll: GOP Takes Lead Over Dems on Generic Congressional Ballot |

Mediaitewww.mediaite.com


During the government shutdown in October, the public’s revulsion with what was widely seen as an uncalled for tactical maneuver resulted in a shift towards Democrats in the generic congressional ballot. A CNN/ORC survey from late October showed voters preferring generic Democrats over Republicans by 50 to 42 percent. That lead has evaporated in the wake of the Affordable Care Act’s roll out and CNN/ORC’s latest generic ballot polling shows the voting public has turned away from Democrats.
The latest CNN survey shows voters preferring a generic GOP candidate over a generic Democrat by 49 to 44 percent. This represents a 13-point shift in voter sentiment from the height of the shutdown. Furthermore, it shows that the swing towards Republicans has not slowed as the White House focused all its efforts on attempting smooth out the ACA’s issues in December. A CNN generic ballot survey from late November showed voters preferring Republicans over Democrats by just 2 points, at 49 to 47 percent.

RELATED: New Poll Shows 21-Point Swing Against Congressional GOP Among Independents

Worse for Democrats, this survey found that voters loyal to the party in power in the Senate are less enthusiastic than average about heading to the polls next year. Only 22 percent of Democrats described themselves as “extremely” or “very enthusiastic” about voting in the 2014 midterms. 36 percent of self-identified Republicans said they were enthusiastic.


THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT POLICY STANCE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE-----OBAMA'S ACTIONS ARE ILLEGAL!


Regarding the history of Presidency and a do-nothing Congress:

Raise your hands if you know that Congress is not passing laws because the International Trade Agreements have global corporations rewriting the US Constitution and our elected officials helping them!!! EVERYONE. SO WHY DOES US MEDIA NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THAT IS WHAT CONGRESS HAS BEEN DOING AND BUSY THEY ARE?

The 1% want everything in place before the public knows so they will wait until just before Congress tries to fast track all of this and act as if this is legitimate. NONE OF IT IS. This topic plays to the corporate NPR report having a Presidential historian talk about Obama's Presidency and how history will look at it. THE CLUE HERE IS THAT NONE OF WHAT IS HAPPENING IS LEGITIMATE!

We know the history of Nixon THREATENED WITH IMPEACHMENT AND FORCED TO RESIGN for simply a small spying scheme. That was back when we had strong separation of branches of government with a court system that worked under the US Constitution. It is a time as well that the American media was free and democratic and worked to hold power accountable. So, what is now a small breech of law had Nixon running for the door.

Fast forward to today and we have a President who CANNOT SEE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION. Huffington Post ran an article calling Obama's Presidency the most corrupt in US history, beating George Bush which is a high bar to cross! Yet, in this corporate NPR analysis of Presidents, not one word about Obama's Presidency being illegitimate! How can that be? Remember, Greenspan and Geithner committed treason and what most people consider acts worse than terrorism in fueling and encouraging the massive mortgage and financial frauds of last decade......TREASON FOR GOODNESS SAKE and Obama is the public protector-in-chief who embraced the enemy.........ALL ILLEGAL. They didn't know says Greenspan! WE ALL KNOW MR. GREENSPAN!

What you heard on NPR of the history that mentions none of this is no doubt heading for the Common Core history section along with the Bush Administration's wonderful performance in protecting our nation against weapons of mass destruction. THEY ARE WRITING PROPAGANDA FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS.....only, the American people are seeing through this capture and reversing these policies! So too, we will reverse this lawlessness and suspended Rule of Law. You see, when a government suspends Rule of Law and attempts a COUP in rewriting the nation's Constitution-----none of what that President does is legitimate! HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN IMPEACHED WHEN HE PLACED GEITHNER AS TREASURY SECRETARY AND FILLED POSTS WITH THE VERY PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THESE MASSIVE FRAUDS.

Why is this important now? The American people would not be served to impeach Obama because those in line work for global tribunals as well. So, Biden and Pelosi --------the other leadership----Durbin and Schumer in the Senate and Hoyer in the House----ALL WORKING FOR GLOBAL TRIBUNALS. So, we must wait for the next elections to shake the neo-liberals out of the rug and declare all these actions illegal. It is important for what the NPR report on Presidency stated-----the final years of Obama's Presidency will be spent

STACKING THE FEDERAL COURTS WITH NEO-LIBERAL/GLOBAL CORPORATE JUDGES! SEE WHY HARRY REID RELAXED THE SUPERMAJORITY RULE FOR COURT APPOINTMENTS?

The example used by NPR was Roosevelt stacking the courts with progressives to offset Obama's intention to stack the courts with neo-liberal/global corporate judges. We can look at the recent NSA constitutionality in the courts now to see how that works. The Washington courts shouted loudly and strongly that there is no way NSA actions were constitutional and IT IS NOT UNDER ANY INTERPRETATION. Yet, the New York judge appointed by a neo-liberal Clinton used this reasoning: if corporations can literally rape and pillage for profit all of the American people's personal information then why would it be illegal for a government to use it?

THE POINT IS THAT CORPORATIONS SHOULD NOT BE RAPING AND PILLAGING OUR PERSONAL INFORMATION EITHER. A NEO-LIBERAL JUDGE WORKS FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT AND WOULD NOT SEE THAT AS ILLEGAL. APPOINTMENTS OF JUDGES BY OBAMA WILL BE VOID.

These are the kinds of judges that Obama will appoint and it will eliminate any ability of the public to receive justice as these Trade laws are enacted and global corporations are able to do as they please-----which is what they are doing now. It is important to shout out that Obama's term in office was made illegal from the point he embraced people known to have participated in illegal activities that proved to devastate the nation. OBAMA'S APPOINTMENTS WILL BE VOIDED BECAUSE HE SHOULD NOT STILL BE IN OFFICE.

What about the 2010 election? We voted for him again. There was no primary and democrats voted because the other candidate would be worse. That is not an election ----it is the sham elections they have in third world countries.

The point is this-----if the American people are to move back to a first world, Rule of Law nation with the Constitution it has had from its conception we must shout out all the transgressions of these few years, provide justice, and reverse the damage. It is like any nation whose government is taken by thugs.

TPP IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION, FAILURE TO HOLD WALL STREET AND CORPORATE EXECUTIVES ACCOUNTABLE IS ILLEGAL, AND ALLOWING THE RAIDING OF THE US TREASURY OF TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IS EQUIVALENT TO AIDING THE ENEMY.

This is the Presidential history to be written of Bush and Obama for American history books and it will be written.

________________________________________________

SO, WHEN A PRESIDENT KNOWS PEOPLE IN HIGH OFFICE BROKE THE LAW AND IGNORES IT-----HE IS ACTING CRIMINALLY AS WELL AND IS AIDING AND ABETTING!

TPP AND OBAMA'S JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS ARE NULL AND VOID!



The Case against Greenspan and Bernanke  by Mike Whitney | February 27, 2010 - 11:44am

Is there enough evidence to indict Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan on charges that they aided and abetted the banks and other financial institutions in the sale of fraudulent loans to investors?

That depends on whether there is sufficient proof to show whether the two men KNEW that the nation's lenders were engaged in large-scale predatory lending and chose to do nothing. As we'll see, both Greenspan and Bernanke were warned repeatedly about the mortgage/derivatives scam by credible professionals and industry regulators, but failed to act.

Here's a definition of "aided and abetted" from the 'Lectric Law Library:

"The guilt of a person in a criminal case may be proved without evidence that he personally did every act involved in the commission of the crime charged. ...if the acts or conduct of an agent, employee or other associate of the person are willfully directed or authorized by the person, or if the person aids and abets another person by willfully joining together with that person in the commission of a crime, then the law holds the person responsible for the conduct of that other person just as though the person had engaged in such conduct himself."

Bernanke denies culpability in the meltdown--but at the same time-- eagerly points out that the Federal Reserve is the chief regulator responsible for overseeing the "large complex financial firms that pose a threat to the stability of the financial system." So, which is it? Does he accept responsibility or not? Here is a statement Bernanke made earlier in the week during an appearance before the Senate Banking Committee which may help to clarify the point.

“I think that stripping the Federal Reserve of supervisory authorities in the light of the recent crisis would be a grave mistake... we’ve learned from the crisis large complex financial firms that pose a threat to the stability of the financial system need strong consolidated supervision.... You need an institution that has a breadth of skills. It’s hard for me to understand why in the face of a crisis that was so complex and covered so many markets and institutions, you would want to take out of the regulatory system the one institution that has the full breadth and range of those skills to address those issues.”

Bernanke admits that the Fed is the 'primary regulator' that is responsible for "strong consolidated supervision" over "large complex financial firms that pose a threat to the stability."

Fine. If we accept his definition, than we must also accept that the Fed needs to be held accountable when it clearly abuses its authority and puts the system at risk. The record will show that, at the very least, the Fed is guilty of criminal negligence for its role in facilitating the sale of fraudulent loans to homeowners and investors. The Fed consistently refused to use its authority to reign in the banks even when their activities pushed the system towards catastrophe.

I have put together a short list of the regulators and agencies that warned Bernanke and Greenspan prior to the Lehman meltdown. (There's bound to be many I have missed) But, first, here is a brief summary of what caused the crisis by economist and author James K. Galbraith in a recent interview on New deal 2.0:

"The principal cause of the crisis was the dismantling of the system of regulation and supervision in the financial sector which had for much of the post-war period kept the most dangerous elements of that sector in check. In the absence of an appropriate system of effective supervision and regulation, what happens is that the actors in the system, who are intent upon taking the greatest degree of risk — including actors who are intent upon using fraudulent methods to increase their returns — come to dominate parts of the system. As they do that, the general methods of assessing performance in the market, specifically stock-market valuations, become counter-productive. That is to say, they invariably reward the worst actors, while they force more traditional actors, who are still respecting the old norms of conduct, into a competitively disadvantaged position. Thus the bad actors, the fraudulent actors, and the speculative extremists quickly take over.

That is what happened specifically in the origination of mortgages in the United States in the middle part of the last decade. You had a transition from a traditional method of issuing mortgages to people who could be reasonably expected to service them, to a method of originating mortgages that were sold off immediately, that were rated in a way that permitted them to be bundled and sold to fiduciaries, and where the issuer had no interest in whether the borrowers could pay or not. In fact, in some ways the lenders actively preferred people who did not intend to pay, because they could then inflate the value of the loan and earn a larger fee upfront for doing it. And in this way, not only was there a large segment of the market that was explicitly corrupt, but the equity value of homes all across the country was compromised. When these practices collapsed, so too did the home values not only of people who had bad mortgages, but also those for many people who had good mortgages, good incomes and perfectly good credit.

The result of that was a general slump in activity. The wealth and financial security of much of the American middle class disappeared. So far about a quarter of the measured wealth of the American middle class has disappeared - about $15 trillion of $60 trillion. That’s bound to have a fantastically traumatic effect on people’s consumption behavior and on their ability to get new good credit. Even if they wish to continue to extend the past pattern of borrowing in order to finance activity, they can’t do it. So, this is a very big problem. It starts with a failure to supervise and regulate the financial system, and flows on to the reaction of the broader population, which is to protect their remaining assets, to become extremely adverse to taking ordinary business and consumer risks."
http://www.newdeal20.org/?p=7981

So, Galbraith believes that the main problem was "the dismantling of the system of regulation and supervision" over the last quarter century. This view is now widely held; that deregulation played a bigger part in the crisis than the Fed's low interest rates. The problem with this theory is that it tends to obscure the fact that the Fed STILL had the authority to step in and prevent people from getting ripped-off. Thus, "deregulation" was not the problem as much as "failure to regulate". (which Galbraith also notes) This is an important distinction. The financial crisis was not caused by a system malfunction; it was caused by men perpetrating a crime.

Bernanke and Greenspan had a birds-eye view of everything that was going on in the market, that is, mortgage origination, off-balance sheet operations and securitization. They knew that homes were being sold to applicants who had no way of servicing the debt. They knew that hybrid mortgages were developed with the clear intention of increasing the quantity of mortgages without regard for the creditworthiness of the borrower. They knew that the lenders didn't care whether the loans blew up or not since they made their profits on upfront fees. They knew it all, and refused to act.

As it happens, many other people knew what was going on, too, but either kept quiet or were ignored by the media. Even now, when we have a much better understanding of what really took place, the media still presents the crisis as if it was a natural disaster--like an earthquake--that no one could have anticipated or prevented. This is nonsense. The housing bubble was 100% man-made. The Fed could have taken action at any time to stop the bubble from getting bigger but, instead, became the biggest cheerleader for dodgy loans and garbage mortgage-backed securities.

The media has succeeded in concealing the facts and deflecting the blame. As former bank regulator Bill Black said in a recent interview with Paul Solman on PBS News Hour, what is shocking about this particular crisis is the appalling lack of accountability.

ZERO INDICTMENTS, ZERO CONVICTIONS

William Black: "In the savings and loan crisis... we had over 1,000 convictions of senior insiders.... At this stage among the subprime lending specialists, we have zero convictions. We have zero indictments."..."In September 2004, the FBI began publicly warning that there was an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud, and it predicted that it would produce an economic crisis, if it were not dealt with. The FBI has also said that 80 percent of the mortgage fraud losses occur when lender personnel are involved. So, Fitch looks at a small sample of these loans, finally, in November 2007....And what did they find? They said...that there was the appearance of fraud in nearly every file we examined. And they said that normal underwriting would have detected all of those frauds.

So, this is coming from the lenders overwhelmingly. They created incentive systems for the loan brokers and the loan officers that were based overwhelmingly on volume, and nothing on quality. We know that they gutted their underwriting standards. We know that you got in trouble if you were moral and tried to be a good officer and protect the organization from loss." (PBS News Hour)

Repeat: The FBI KNEW there was an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud as early as 2004. Ergo: The Fed knew. Greenspan knew. Bernanke knew. And both chose not to perform their regulatory duties to stop the swindle from continuing.

And the FBI wasn't the only one who knew either. In testimony just last month before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (Jan 14, 2010) FDIC chairman Sheila Bair confirmed that she not only warned the Fed of what was going on, but cited particular regulations under which the Fed could stop the "unfair, abusive and deceptive practices" by the banks. Here is a excerpt from her damning testimony:

"PROBLEMS IN THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE MARKET WERE IDENTIFIED WELL BEFORE MANY OF THE ABUSIVE MORTGAGE LOANS WERE MADE. A joint report issued in 2000 by HUD and the Department of the Treasury entitled Curbing Predatory Home Mortgage Lending noted that a very limited number of borrowers benefit from HOEPA's protections because of the high thresholds that a loan must exceed in order for the protections to apply. THE REPORT ALSO FOUND THAT CERTAIN TYPES OF SUBPRIME LOANS APPEAR TO BE HARMFUL OR ABUSIVE IN PRACTICALLY ALL CASES. To address these issues, THE REPORT MADE A NUMBER OF RECOMMENDATIONS INCLUDING THAT THE FEDERAL RESERVE USE ITS HOEPA AUTHORITY TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN UNFAIR DECEPTIVE AND ABUSIVE PRACTICES BY LENDERS AND THIRD PARTIES. During hearings held in 2000, consumer groups urged the Federal Reserve to use its HOEPA rulemaking authority to address concerns about predatory lending. Both the House and Senate held hearings on predatory abuses in the subprime market in May 2000 and July 2001, respectively...."

Naturally, Bair's testimony was ignored by the media.

So, the FBI knew, the FDIC knew, Fitch ratings knew, the Fed and Treasury knew. Was their anyone else who warned Greenspan and Bernanke about what was going on?

Yes, ex-Fed chairman Alan Greenspan's good friend Ed Gramlich cautioned him on the surge in predatory lending that was apparent as early as 2000. Here's an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

“Edward Gramlich, who was Fed governor from 1997 to 2005, said he proposed to Mr. Greenspan in or around 2000, when predatory lending was a growing concern, that the Fed use its discretionary authority to send examiners into the offices of consumer-finance lenders that were units of Fed-regulated bank holding companies.

"I would have liked the Fed to be a leader" in cracking down on predatory lending, Mr. Gramlich, now a scholar at the Urban Institute, said in an interview this past week. Knowing it would be controversial with Mr. Greenspan, whose deregulatory philosophy is well known, Mr. Gramlich broached it to him personally rather than take it to the full board.

"He was opposed to it, so I didn't really pursue it," says Mr. Gramlich. (Wall Street Journal)

So, Greenspan was even warned by a close friend and fellow Fed governor and STILL refused to act? And Congress still hasn't launched an investigation?

And, then there is this from Elizabeth MacDonald at Fox News in an article titled "Housing Red flags Ignored":

"One of the nation’s biggest mortgage industry players repeatedly warned the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other bank regulators during the housing bubble that the U.S. faced an imminent housing crash....But bank regulators not only ignored the group's warnings, top Fed officials also went on the airwaves to say the economy was "building on a sturdy foundation" and a housing crash was "unlikely."

The letters, obtained by Fox Business, were sent in 2005 and 2006 before the housing bubble burst.

As it pleaded with bank regulators to stop subprime lending abuses, the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America [MICA] pointed out the red flags in analysis from the bank regulators' own staffers as well as the likes of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, three years before these two Wall Street giants collapsed under the weight of bad mortgage bets.

Mortgage insurers are “deeply concerned about increased mortgage market fragility, which, combined with growing bank portfolios in high-risk products, pose serious potential problems that could occur with dramatic suddenness,” warned Suzanne Hutchinson, top executive at the Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, in 2005. Failure to adjust bank underwriting, reserves and capital to account for this growing risk “means that downturns from credit and/or interest rate events–let alone shocks–will be far more severe than” if precautions are taken, Hutchinson noted, adding that what is “disturbing to us is the fact that recent trends could lead to sudden increases in foreclosures.” ( Elizabeth MacDonald, "Housing Red flags Ignored", FOX Business News)

Even the mortgage insurance companies knew what was going on. Everyone knew. The biggest mortgage-looting operation in history, and no one even bothered to cover their tracks. What incredible arrogance.

Finally, there's this tidbit; an op-ed published in the Washington Post in 2008 by former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who accused the Bush Administration of being a ‘partner in crime’ in the subprime mortgage fiasco. Spitzer avers that the OCC launched “an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.” Here's a clip from Spitzer's article:

"In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation."(Washington Post)

Is there any doubt that the Fed knew exactly what the Bush administration was up to? Is there any doubt that the OCC's actions resulted in tens of thousands--if not millions--of homeowners losing their homes to foreclosure?

There's no doubt at all. People were getting fleeced in broad daylight. As the primary regulator responsible for overseeing the financial system an preventing "unfair, abusive and deceptive practices", the Fed could have intervened at any time and stopped the predatory lending and exploitation. Instead, they sat on their hands and let the larceny to continue.

Greenspan and Bernanke are either criminally negligent in executing their regulatory duties or complicit in aiding and abetting the banks and other financial institutions in the sale of fraudulent loans to investors and homeowners. Which is it? There needs to be an investigation to find out.



___________________________________________
RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU UNDERSTAND THAT ALL OF THE POLICIES LISTED BELOW DESCRIBING TPP IS AN ASSAULT ON THE US CONSTITUTION AND THEREFOR ILLEGAL!

SHOUT OUT THAT OBAMA IS ACTING ILLEGALLY BY NEGOTIATING THESE DEALS AND YOUR NEO-LIBERAL WILL BE ACTING ILLEGALLY IF THEY PASS THESE DEALS!


THEY WILL BE NULL AND VOID WITH RULE OF LAW

New Economy  |  Global Trade Justice  |  People vs corporations


Can a “Dracula Strategy” Bring Trans-Pacific Partnership into the Sunlight?

A highly secretive trade agreement aims to penalize countries that protect workers, consumers, and the environment. Luckily, the growing opposition goes beyond the usual trade justice suspects. Document Actions


by Lori Wallach posted Nov 21, 2012  YES!

President Barack Obama attends the Trans-Pacific Partnership meeting in Yokohama, Japan, on November 14, 2010. Photo by Pete Souza.

While the election season seized everyone’s attention, government officials and 600 official corporate “advisors” were working behind closed doors to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Negotiations have been cloaked in unprecedented secrecy and its proponents have mislabeled the TPP as a “free trade” agreement. In reality, the TPP is about much more than trade. It threatens a stealthy, slow-motion corporate coup d'etat, formalizing and locking in corporate rule over most aspects of our lives.

The public, Congress, and the press are locked out, but the 600 official corporate advisors have access to the negotiating texts. Thirteen years ago, at the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Seattle Ministerial, a similar threat in the form of a massive expansion of the powers and scope of the WTO was stopped. 

At the Battle in Seattle, the immovable object called grassroots democracy was victorious over the allegedly unstoppable force of corporate-led globalization. The “Doha Round,” which followed two years later and continued the attempt to expand the WTO’s reign, was also derailed thanks to tenacious campaigning by organizations and activists worldwide.

Recalling these historic moments, when people power stopped the dangerous expansion of corporate power, is especially sweet today, when we must again act to safeguard these inspiring victories. All of us who will live with the results must become active to stop the TPP, the latest iteration of corporate coup via “trade” agreement.

What would the TPP do? Eleven countries are now involved—Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States—and there is an open invitation for more to join. Think of the TPP as a NAFTA on steroids, which could encompass half of the world.

Foreign firms could extract unlimited amounts of taxpayer money as compensation when investors claim that U.S. government actions undermine their expected future profits. Seriously. This is the largest, most potentially damaging agreement since the 1995 establishment of the WTO. And you may never have heard about it before. That’s because the negotiations, which have been underway for three years, are being conducted in extreme secrecy. The public, Congress, and the press are locked out, but the 600 official corporate advisors have access to the negotiating texts.

The TPP is the latest strategy by the same gang who got us into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and pushed for the expansion of the WTO: American job-offshorers like GE and Caterpillar; banksters like Citi; pharmaceutical price-gouging giants like Pfizer; oil, gas, and mining multinationals like Chevron and Exxon; and agribusiness monopolists like Cargill and Monsanto. 

They’ve misbranded the TPP as a model 21st-Century “trade” deal to try to sell it with the usual false promises of it expanding exports. But only two of the TPP’s 29 chapters are about “trade.”

Most of the TPP’s proposed provisions instead comprise a corporate power grab. The TPP would include extreme protections for foreign investors, which would help corporations offshore American jobs to low-wage countries. These terms would require governments to provide foreign investors a guaranteed “minimum standard of treatment” when they relocate, including special privileges and rights that domestic firms and investors do not enjoy. Foreign firms—or foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms—could extract unlimited amounts of taxpayer money as compensation when investors claim that U.S. government actions undermine a corporation’s expected future profits. Seriously.

Map by YES! online team.

Equal status for corporations and countries The investor rules would elevate individual foreign firms and investors to the same status as the sovereign nations that would be party to the TPP. Corporations and investors would be empowered to privately enforce the agreement by suing a signatory government before the World Bank and other foreign tribunals. In this “investor-state dispute resolution,” three private-sector lawyers, who rotate between suing governments and acting as “judges,” could order governments to pay large amounts of our tax dollars to investors who do not want to follow the same laws as domestic firms. 

There is almost no progressive movement or campaign whose goals are not threatened. Under similar, if less grandiose, provisions in NAFTA, investors have been paid hundreds of millions of dollars in cases attacking bans on toxic chemicals, land use rules, and more. Phillip Morris Asia has attacked Australia’s cigarette plain packing law—which requires that health warnings be included in cigarette packaging—before such a tribunal. Australia announced in April that it will not agree to be bound to the investor-state regime in the TPP. Negotiators from the United States have declared that all TPP nations must submit to this regime.

Either by winning an investor-state dispute or by preemptively putting a chill on government actions to address critical public needs, the TPP’s investor rights would impose an outer bound of the possible for communities and countries setting policies related to health, the environment, water, or other natural resources. There is almost no progressive movement or campaign whose goals are not threatened, while vast swaths of public-interest policy achieved through decades of struggle are poised to be undermined as these attacks proliferate.

Progressive achievements rolled back Under these terms, democracies would no longer be able to decide that we want to invest our tax dollars to create jobs at home or to create markets for green energy or morally produced goods. The TPP would also ban existing and future “Buy Local” and “Buy American” procurement policies. These are rules that direct federal and state governments to reinvest our tax dollars to create American jobs by buying domestically made cars, steel, food, and more, and by giving contracts to local construction firms or call centers firms. 

The TPP also would expose to attack green and sweat-free procurement rules that specify that only recycled paper, non-old-growth wood products, renewable-source energy, or products made under fair labor standards can be purchased with government funds. Under these terms, democracies would no longer be able to decide that we want to invest our tax dollars to create jobs at home or to create markets for green energy or morally produced goods. Instead, the TPP would require our governments to send our money offshore and spend it with firms trashing human rights and the environment.

The TPP would limit financial regulation by forbidding bans on risky derivatives and other dangerous financial products, as well as the use of capital controls to counter wild surges of speculative investments in and out of countries, which destabilize the global economy. The massive financial firms that caused the financial crisis could use these terms to roll back the new financial regulations implemented in the U.S. and around the world.

Citizen activists in many of the TPP countries are building an inspiring global movement implementing the “Dracula strategy” to drag the TPP into the sunshine. As far as health care goes, the TPP would grant new monopoly privileges to Big Pharma that would jack up medicine prices and cut consumers’ access to life-saving medicines in the developing countries involved in the TPP. There is a proposal to allow pharmaceutical firms to challenge the pricing decisions of cost-saving drug formularies, which are used by developing countries and, increasingly, by the United States, to bargain for better prices with drug firms. 

One chapter would even attack Internet freedom by imposing through the backdoor damaging aspects of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which citizen activism derailed in the U.S. Congress.

A trade justice coalition emerges (again) The 1-percenter TPP agenda would harm most of us in the U.S. and in the other countries involved. It can only survive if left shrouded in darkness. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. But it’s precisely the extreme nature of the TPP corporate wish list that is its greatest vulnerability—and our greatest opportunity. The 1-percenter TPP agenda would harm most of us in the United States and in the other countries involved. It can only survive if left shrouded in darkness. Citizen activists in many of the TPP countries are building an inspiring global movement implementing the “Dracula strategy” to drag the TPP into the sunshine so those who will have to live with its consequences can know what’s coming and take action.

Civil society groups representing millions of members worldwide have joined together in raising the alarm. And, given the stunning audacity of the TPP’s prospective corporate power grab, activism is reaching beyond the environmental, consumer, labor, family farm, and access to medicines groups who have been the mainstay of movements against past “trade” agreement attacks. Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, Avaaz, Consumers International, tobacco controls groups, and many other organizations have become involved. 

From the United States to Australia and even to Malaysia (where any public gathering the authorities consider to be a protest is illegal and participants are subject to arrest), protests are growing. Outside each posh resort where TPP negotiators meet behind closed doors, citizens gather to chant “Flush the TPP,” “Release the Text,” and “Peoples’ Needs, Not Corporate Greed!”

At the next round of negotiations, which will be held in early December in Auckland, New Zealand, negotiators hope to finish several chapters of the deal, so they can sign the whole thing in the first quarter of 2013. 

Each of us can make a difference. Given the threats that the TPP poses to a stunningly broad range of fundamental rights and public needs, this is a fight—like the Battle in Seattle in 1999—that can unite a powerful coalition of movements. And it is people power that will be victorious against the TPP corporate power grab, if you help spread the word.

Lori Wallach wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. A Harvard-trained lawyer, Ms. Wallach has promoted the public interest regarding globalization and international commercial agreements in every forum: Congress and foreign parliaments, the courts, government agencies, and the media. She is director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.


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If you live in Maryland you know two things.....Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski are the Senators and they both are from the Baltimore area.  If you live in Baltimore you know elections are so captured that the media does not even mention challengers names and in 2010, when we wanted to get rid of neo-liberal Cardin=====THERE WAS A BLACK HOLE IN MEDIA.  NO ONE KNEW WHO THE OTHER CANDIDATES ON THE BALLOT WERE.

Below you see the reason.  It is the Senate that will sign these TPP into law and keeping neo-liberals in charge in the Senate was a priority.  Needing 2/3 votes in the Senate to approve treaties meant all democrats needed to be neo-liberals.  These two pols play good cop because they work for a labor and justice district, but they are the Glass-Steagall, global corporate rule pols and have used trillions in tax revenue to build Johns Hopkins into a global corporation-----their global tribunal!


The point is this:  it is the Senate that should be censoring the President for his illegal actions and we know they are not.  This makes them duplicitous and their action null and void. 

DO NOT THINK THIS IS HARD------IT IS VERY BASIC AND VERY EASY!  EASY PEASY, ALL WE NEED DO IS RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE


'Imagine that the President is accused of some wrongdoing. Congress may vest its power to appoint a special prosecutor in the federal courts, and the court may then appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the charges made against the President. Independence from the executive branch is crucial here to avoid any appearance of impropriety',



Presidential Powers

Appointments Clause:
Article II, Section 2, clause 2 grants the President the power to “appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States [except those whose positions are not otherwise already provided for in the Constitution, and] Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers…in the President alone.” In other words, the President is given broad appointing powers, and the powers not granted the President which remain with Congress may be vested in the President by Congressional act.

Treaty:
A compact made between two or more independent nations with a view to the public welfare…a contract between two nations. Black’s Law Dictionary, 6th Ed., West Publishing Co., 1990

Pocket veto:
The President’s power to veto a bill is time-limited. If Congress is not in session and the President does not actively veto the bill, but rather “pockets” it, after 10 days the bill is automatically vetoed. If, on the other hand, Congress is in session at the end of the ten days the President’s opportunity to veto has lapsed and the bill will become law.

Article II of the Constitution vests the powers of the executive branch in the President of the United States and details the powers of that office. In short, the executive branch is responsible for carrying into effect the laws as passed by the legislative branch and making sure that the laws are observed. The responsibilities are best split into two separate areas – Domestic Affairs and Foreign Policy.

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS

The Appointments Clause gives the executive branch and the President, not Congress, the power to appoint federal officials. The President has the power to appoint federal judges, ambassadors, and other "principal officers” of the United States, subject to Senate confirmation of such appointments. “Principal officers” here includes ambassadors and Members of the Cabinet. Although the Senate may opt not to confirm a Presidential appointment, Congress cannot limit or eliminate the President’s powers to make the appointments.

EXAMPLE: A member of the Supreme Court decides to step down to spend more time with her family in her old age. The empty slot is filled by the President, who appoints a new Justice. The appointment, however, is subject to Senate approval.

The power to appoint “inferior Officers” mentioned in Article II vests in the President only by Congressional approval. While Congress cannot itself exercise the power to make such appointments, Congress may vest this power in the judiciary or in Cabinet officials. In Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988), the Supreme Court clarified the line between principal officers and inferior officers, leaving essentially only Cabinet Members, federal judges, and ambassadors in the higher category. One important example of an “inferior Officer” position is that of Independent Counsel (a special prosecutor), which means that Congress may vest the power to appoint Independent Counsel in the judiciary, ensuring impartiality when issues arise concerning the executive branch.

EXAMPLE: Imagine that the President is accused of some wrongdoing. Congress may vest its power to appoint a special prosecutor in the federal courts, and the court may then appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the charges made against the President. Independence from the executive branch is crucial here to avoid any appearance of impropriety,

Along with the power to appoint comes the power to remove. Except where statutorily limited, the President may remove any executive branch officer. Congress cannot prevent removal entirely, but may limit removal by requiring a showing of good cause, provided the office from which the person is being fired is one where some measure of independence from the President is desirable. For example, the power of the President to remove Members of the Cabinet cannot be limited by Congress, because independence from the President is not desirable for those posts.

Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988) had an effect here too, and as a result even the power to remove purely executive officers may be limited by Congress so long as the restrictions imposed do not interfere with the Presidential performance of his Constitutional duties.

So if Congress may limit the President’s power to remove executive branch officers, may Congress itself remove people from these posts? Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986) made clear that Congress may not do so.

In Bowsher, as a result of Congress’ attempt to reduce federal budget deficits, Congress gave the Comptroller General certain executive powers. Previous legislation already afforded Congress the power to remove the Comptroller for various reasons, but because Congress now bestowed on that position certain executive powers, the Court struck down the relevant provision of the act. So Bowsher tells us that Congress may not retain the right to remove for any cause any executive officer. This power remains with the executive branch and the President.

EXAMPLE: Congress decides that its power to declare war would be compromised if our Secretary of Defense does not meet certain standards of performance. Congress therefore passes a statute requiring the Secretary of Defense to appear before Congress each year and explain what he has done to improve our nation’s readiness for time of war. The statute provides that should the Secretary fail to make satisfactory improvements in any year, Congress may vote to remove the Secretary. Because the Secretary of Defense is a Cabinet posting under the President as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, the statute would be an unconstitutional exercise of power.

The President and other executive officers, however, may be removed from office by Congress through the power to impeach. Impeachment itself does not remove one from office. Instead, the House of Representatives votes to impeach. If the vote passes, a Senate trial is held, and only if the Senate convicts will the officer be removed from office. The House vote requires a simple majority to pass. The Senate conviction requires a 2/3 majority vote to pass.

While Congress may impeach and thereafter remove a President, the President does enjoy certain immunities from prosecution. Regarding civil suits seeking money damages for any Presidential acts while in office, the President is absolutely immune. In Clinton v. Jones, 117 S. Ct. 1636 (1997), it was made clear that the President enjoys absolutely no immunity for non-Presidential acts. Not only was the President subject to suit from Paula Jones, the Court refused to grant him even temporary immunity which would have allowed the President to put off his defense until his term of office was complete. The rationale behind the immunity – of ensuring that the President need not fear personal liability for acts of office - was entirely inapplicable according to the Court. Acts prior to taking the office of the Presidency are therefore also not included in the President’s shield from suit.

EXAMPLE: Suppose a President, years before taking office, is involved in a real estate deal in his home state. While in the office of the Presidency, facts come to light indicating that he may have committed fraudulent acts as part of the transaction. Although defending himself from the suit will take away from the time he can dedicate to his Office, he is neither immune from suit nor able to postpone adjudication.

The President does have an executive privilege covering Presidential papers and discussion, which affords further protection and the ability to refuse disclosure. Although this privilege will on occasion yield to other overriding governmental interest. In U.S. v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974) we are provided with the only Supreme Court decision which draws boundaries for this privilege. There, it was found that whether the privilege applies or not is decided by the Court, not the President, and that because of the need to fully develop the facts relevant to a criminal trial, the privilege was outweighed in that case and disclosure could not be avoided.

Finally, Article II, Section 2, clause 1 grants the President “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” This means that the President may pardon someone who is accused or convicted of a federal crime, but the President holds no such power regarding violation of state law or civil, as opposed to criminal, offenses.

EXAMPLE: Frank grew up with the man who is now President of the United States. Although they weren’t close growing up, Frank is sure the President will remember him and help him. After all, Frank helped him out of that sticky situation in high school, without which the President probably never would have been able to get his diploma. The help Frank needs involves a felony conviction for aggravated assault and rape in Kansas for which Frank feels he has served enough time. Somehow he manages to get the President on the phone to personally request a pardon. Needless to say the President is likely more than happy to tell Frank that he would help him if he could, but alas he doesn’t have the power to pardon anyone convicted of a state crime. “Call me when you get out,” he says, “we’ll do lunch.”

FOREIGN POLICY

In addition to bestowing upon the President certain powers regarding domestic affairs, Article II grants the President broad discretion over foreign policy.
The two most important means of establishing foreign policy are treaties and executive agreements, and these operate differently with respect to state and federal laws and the Constitution.

Article II, Section 2, clause 2 grants the President “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties” pending approval when ratified by a 2/3 majority vote of the Senate.

Executive Agreements are not Constitutionally authorized, but are nonetheless agreed to be within the powers vested in the President. The most immediately apparent difference between a treaty and an Executive Agreement is that Executive Agreements do not require Senate approval, as that requirement stems from the Constitutional grant of power to enter into a Treaty. This is not as dangerous a sidestep around the Constitution as it may first appear. Crucial differences exist between the power and force of a treaty versus that of an Executive Agreement. These differences are examined in the chart at the end of this Section:

What is the advantage in the President seeking Senate approval and entering into a treaty rather than an Executive Agreement? Only a treaty can surmount any existing federal law, and it is precisely that power of the treaty which makes Senate approval necessary.

Note that in no case will state law interfere with the terms of either a treaty or an Executive Agreement. Were it otherwise, the states could effectively invalidate the President’s power to conduct foreign policy, as any agreements with foreign nations with which a state disagreed could be essentially nullified by the individual states.

EXAMPLE: The President enters into a treaty with China, which the Senate ratifies. The treaty provides, in part, that goods exported from China to the U.S. will be taxed at a particularly low import tax rate, in exchange for which goods shipped from the U.S. to China will enter China’s stream of commerce without having any import tax imposed. Suppose it would be possible for a number of states to now pass laws which would impose hefty import taxes on Chinese goods. The U.S. as a whole would not be living up to its end of the bargain, and the President’s ability to enter into agreements with foreign nations would be seriously compromised.

In addition to the power to enter into treaties and Executive Agreements, the President is named “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy” by Article II. So while only Congress has the authority to formally declare war, controversy abounds regarding the President’s ability to commit armed forces abroad in the absence of such a Congressional declaration.

Some areas are clear, such as the authority for the President to commit our forces to defend against a sudden attack. See Prize Cases, 67 U.S. 635 (1863). It is also clear that Congress may delegate its powers to the President in advance, to be exercised at the President’s discretion, so long as the delegation is not overly broad. It is not clear, however, just what are the President’s powers to commit to a preemptive strike prior to an anticipated enemy attack or to commit troops to defend our allies against a sudden attack.

Finally, the President has the power to veto any act of Congress. An act vetoed by the President may still be passed into law only by a 2/3 majority vote of each house of Congress, whether the President vetoed the bill actively or by a pocket veto.



0 Comments

December 27th, 2013

12/27/2013

0 Comments

 
AS OBAMA DOES HIS USUAL DOUBLE-SPEAK SAYING THAT TPP WILL CREATE MORE JOBS AND THAT HE IS WORKING TO STRENGTHEN SAFETY NETS------HE IS ACTUALLY DOING THE OPPOSITE.  HE THINKS THAT CUTTING ACCESS TO SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE IS STRENGTHENING THESE TRUSTS.  TAKING FROM THE PEOPLE RATHER THAN RECOVERING THE MONEY RAIDED FROM THESE TRUSTS BY CORPORATE FRAUD.

THIS IS SERIOUS FOLKS.....THEY HAVE GUTTED EVERY RETIREMENT AND SAVINGS PEOPLE HAVE AND NOW THEY ARE COMING FOR FEDERAL TRUSTS-----SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE. 


It is Obama who gave no COLA for a few years and now only 1%....the largest loss of money for payments in Social Security ever. We all know inflation is higher than the 1-2% the FED says. Obama has never acknowledged as well that Reagan tripled payroll taxes in 1980s so baby boomers would not have shortfalls in these Trusts.

THERE IS NO SHORTFALL.....JUST AN ATTEMPT TO TAKE THESE RETIREMENT FUNDS AS WELL!!

The FED artificially keeps inflation near 0%....this has never before been done.....and no one thinks it is really at 1-2%. So, Obama chooses Bernanke who states inflation is at 0% even as everyone pays more for most consumption. If Obama questioned that inflation number, the FED would not get away with giving this inflation number.

Isn't it odd that since the 1970s an average of 4% COLA each year....that is a great big difference.


WASHINGTON – Social Security recipients will get a raise in January -- their first increase in benefits since 2009. It's expected to be about 3.5 percent.

Congress adopted the measure in the 1970s, and since then it has resulted in annual benefit increases averaging 4.2 percent. But there was no COLA in 2010 or 2011 because inflation was too low. That was small comfort to the millions of retirees and disabled people who have seen retirement accounts dwindle and home values drop during the period of economic weakness, said David Certner, legislative policy director for the AARP.


More simply said is that I am almost sure that the FED is fixing that inflation rate and Obama is not outing him on behalf of the people losing lots of money!  WE NEED TO GET THAT LOST INCREASE BACK WITH HIGHER MONTHLY PAYMENTS FROM HIGHER COLAs.  We are hearing the right approach from some REAL progressive pols.....since the American people have had their retirements gutted from fraud and lost to manipulated corporate bankruptcies, we now need Social Security to be increased so as to provide the quality of life intended from our retirements. We need Social Security to be EXPANDED AND IMPROVED TO SERVE AS INTENDED!

Let's be clear about the idea that eliminating the cap on Social Security taxes would make this a redistribution of wealth and not an insurance program------

WE HAVE HAD TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CORPORATE FRAUD OVER THIS PAST DECADE AND HAVING THE AFFLUENT PAY MORE IS NOT A REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH----IT IS JUSTICE!



Wednesday, Jul 24, 2013 12:12 PM EDT


Growing consensus on Social Security: Expand it After staving off Obama's plan to cut benefits, progressives are fighting to boost checks to seniors

Alex Seitz-Wald  SALON

Thanks in part to their effort, along with Republican recalcitrance and changing economic realities, Democrats have abandoned any plans to mess with the social safety net, at least for the moment. The federal deficit has fallen precipitously this year  – Treasury actually ran a surplus in June — and with it, the impetus for a “grand bargain” trading safety net cuts for increased tax revenue has evaporated. (This may have been the White House’s plan all along.)

Now, as Obama prepares to deliver a major speech on the economy today, the scrappy activists who were until recently playing defense against cuts are turning around and pushing to increase Social Security benefits.

“Social Security is the most effective anti-poverty program in history. Forget cutting it — we need to double down on success and make it even stronger,” Jim Dean, the chair of Democracy for America, will say in an email to supporters today.

The coalition of leading progressive groups, including the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, Credo Action, MoveOn.org, Progressives United and Social Security Works, are joining together to back a plan introduced by Democratic Sens. Tom Harkin and Mark Begich to boost benefits and shore up Social Security’s finances for the better part of the next century.



These kinds of economic justice issues are Harkin’s bread and butter, but Begich, who is up for reelection this year in deep-red Alaska, is an interesting addition. In May, he made a splash by breaking with Obama on Social Security cuts. His leadership on this issue suggests he thinks expanding the social safety net will not only not hurt him, but actually help him politically, even in one of the most Republican states in the union.

And there’s reason to believe he’s right — Social Security is overwhelmingly popular. A new PPP poll commissioned by DFA and the PCCC found that 51 percent of Kentucky voters support the Harkin-Begich framework, which would boost benefits for 75-year-old workers by $452 per year and by $807 per year for 85-year-olds. Twenty-four percent said they didn’t support the plan, and another 24 said they weren’t sure.


Obama’s budget called for changing the way inflation is calculated for Social Security by switching to the “chained CPI” (consumer price index) formula, which would have the effect of reducing benefits. Begich and Harkin have each introduced slightly different plans, but both would also change the inflation formula. Their change, however, to the “CPI-E,” better accounts for the fact that seniors spend disproportionate amounts of their income on health care, the price of which grows faster than the price of goods overall.

To pay for this expansion, and to ensure the solvency of all of Social Security for decades into the future, the plan would eliminate the income cap on Social Security FICA taxes. Currently, income above $113,700 is exempt from the tax, meaning someone who makes $1 million a year pays the tax on only about a tenth of their income. The new poll commissioned by the groups found that 62 percent of Kentuckians support removing the cap, while 20 percent oppose it and another 18 percent are unsure.

Some liberals have criticized the idea of removing the cap, arguing that it would undermine the political strength of Social Security by making the plan more of a redistributional welfare system than a social insurance scheme. But others point out that the cap means the current Social Security tax is regressive, charging poor and middle-class Americans a larger portion of their income than millionaires and billionaires.





I'm not a Krugman fan because he is the good cop of global capitalism so never talks of downsizing global corporations as a solution to unaccountability and predatory and criminal culture.  He does a good job supporting the push for expanded Social Security.  Unlike Krugman, I think it can happen real soon.....


RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE CANDIDATES IN ALL PRIMARIES.....ALL OF MARYLAND DEMOCRATS ARE NEO-LIBERALS....SHAKE THE BUGS FROM THE RUG!


Expanding Social Security
By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: November 21, 20  New York Times


For many years there has been one overwhelming rule for people who wanted to be considered serious inside the Beltway. It was this: You must declare your willingness to cut Social Security in the name of “entitlement reform.” It wasn’t really about the numbers, which never supported the notion that Social Security faced an acute crisis. It was instead a sort of declaration of identity, a way to show that you were an establishment guy, willing to impose pain (on other people, as usual) in the name of fiscal responsibility.

But a funny thing has happened in the past year or so. Suddenly, we’re hearing open discussion of the idea that Social Security should be expanded, not cut. Talk of Social Security expansion has even reached the Senate, with Tom Harkin introducing legislation that would increase benefits. A few days ago Senator Elizabeth Warren gave a stirring floor speech making the case for expanded benefits.

Where is this coming from? One answer is that the fiscal scolds driving the cut-Social-Security orthodoxy have, deservedly, lost a lot of credibility over the past few years. (Giving the ludicrous Paul Ryan an award for fiscal responsibility? And where’s my debt crisis?) Beyond that, America’s overall retirement system is in big trouble. There’s just one part of that system that’s working well: Social Security. And this suggests that we should make that program stronger, not weaker.

Before I get there, however, let me briefly take on two bad arguments for cutting Social Security that you still hear a lot.

One is that we should raise the retirement age — currently 66, and scheduled to rise to 67 — because people are living longer. This sounds plausible until you look at exactly who is living longer. The rise in life expectancy, it turns out, is overwhelmingly a story about affluent, well-educated Americans. Those with lower incomes and less education have, at best, seen hardly any rise in life expectancy at age 65; in fact, those with less education have seen their life expectancy decline.

So this common argument amounts, in effect, to the notion that we can’t let janitors retire because lawyers are living longer. And lower-income Americans, in case you haven’t noticed, are the people who need Social Security most.

The other argument is that seniors are doing just fine. Hey, their poverty rate is only 9 percent.

There are two big problems here. First, there are well-known flaws with the official poverty measure, and these flaws almost surely lead to serious understatement of elderly poverty. In an attempt to provide a more realistic picture, the Census Bureau now regularly releases a supplemental measure that most experts consider superior — and this measure puts senior poverty at 14.8 percent, close to the rate for younger adults.

Furthermore, the elderly poverty rate is highly likely to rise sharply in the future, as the failure of America’s private pension system takes its toll.

When you look at today’s older Americans, you are in large part looking at the legacy of an economy that is no more. Many workers used to have defined-benefit retirement plans, plans in which their employers guaranteed a steady income after retirement. And a fair number of seniors (like my father, until he passed away a few months ago) are still collecting benefits from such plans.

Today, however, workers who have any retirement plan at all generally have defined-contribution plans — basically, 401(k)’s — in which employers put money into a tax-sheltered account that’s supposed to end up big enough to retire on. The trouble is that at this point it’s clear that the shift to 401(k)’s was a gigantic failure. Employers took advantage of the switch to surreptitiously cut benefits; investment returns have been far lower than workers were told to expect; and, to be fair, many people haven’t managed their money wisely.

As a result, we’re looking at a looming retirement crisis, with tens of millions of Americans facing a sharp decline in living standards at the end of their working lives. For many, the only thing protecting them from abject penury will be Social Security. Aren’t you glad we didn’t privatize the program?

So there’s a strong case for expanding, not contracting, Social Security. Yes, this would cost money, and it would require additional taxes — a suggestion that will horrify the fiscal scolds, who have been insisting that if we raise taxes at all, the proceeds must go to deficit reduction, not to making our lives better. But the fiscal scolds have been wrong about everything, and it’s time to start thinking outside their box.

Realistically, Social Security expansion won’t happen anytime soon. But it’s an idea that deserves to be on the table — and it’s a very good sign that it finally is.



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People, the amount of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid is escalating as hedge funds and global corporations are allowed to run health institutions. WE ALL KNOW FRAUD WILL SOAR. We know as well that trillions of dollars in health fraud from last decade need to come back to these Trusts. DO YOU HEAR YOUR POL SHOUTING THIS? IF NOT, HE/SHE IS A NEO-LIBERAL WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT.

The Affordable Care Act actually guts Medicare and Medicaid access to quality health care, pushing people to access less due to co-pays and deductibles and to access only preventative care for the most part in the case of Medicaid.   Almost 90% of Americans will fall into these categories soon as neo-liberals work to keep unemployment high and cut social programs rather than bringing back tens of trillions of dollars in corporate fraud!


Below you see a well-researched paper on health fraud.  Notice that the amount of fraud back in 1998 was $250 billion a year.....THAT WAS BEFORE CORPORATE FRAUD WENT ON STEROIDS...Google it and read the entire thesis!


'It is clear to see why Americans consider this the biggest cause, when health care fraud was estimated to cost approximately $100 billion to $250 billion per year in 1998, or 10 percent to 25 percent of total health care spending'

 by
Emily Fisher
April 2008

ABSTRACT
Health care fraud is an important and visible factor associated with increasing health care costs in the United States. Medicare and Medicaid contribute to a vast majority of those cost sand therefore must be heavily scrutinized. This thesis will investigate the types of fraud, who commits them, and why the health care system is more susceptible to fraud. More specifically, the problems and complications of current fraud investigation for Medicare and Medicaid are examined. This thesis will then evaluate how successful these initiatives were in reducing health care fraud and explore new suggestions for preventing health care fraud in the future.



RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES!



Senators Press Medicare for Answers on Drug Program

by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber
ProPublica, Dec. 24, 2013, 5:55 a.m.

Senator Tom Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement that he is concerned about "serious vulnerabilities" of Medicare's popular prescription drug program as detailed in a ProPublica report. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A Senate committee chairman said he is concerned about the “serious vulnerabilities” detailed in a ProPublica report about scams that target Medicare’s popular prescription drug program.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement that he plans to ask Medicare officials and the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “to look into the specifics of these cases, as well as determine the extent of any program-wide vulnerabilities that may have allowed them to occur.” The committee monitors fraud in government programs.

ProPublica reporters, using Medicare’s own data, identified scores of doctors whose prescription patterns within the program bore the hallmarks of fraud. The cost of their prescribing spiked dramatically from one year to the next — in some cases by millions of dollars — as they chose brand-name drugs that scammers can easily resell.

The cost of medications prescribed by one Miami doctor jumped from $282,000 to $4 million in one year, but her lawyer said Medicare never questioned it. A Los Angeles psychiatrist said Medicare didn’t shut off his provider identification number, used to fill prescriptions, even though he claimed someone had forged his name on more than $7 million worth of them.

All told, just the schemes identified by ProPublica totaled tens of millions of dollars.

While credit card companies routinely flag or block suspicious charges as they happen, the detection system used by Medicare’s massive drug program sometimes allows years to pass before taking action that might stop the fraud.

Known as Part D, the program provides coverage to 36 million seniors and disabled people. It cost taxpayers $62 billion last year.

ProPublica has spent the past year examining Medicare’s oversight of Part D. It found that Medicare doesn’t analyze its prescribing data to root out doctors whose inappropriate drug choices endanger patients. Nor has it flagged those whose unchecked devotion to name-brand drugs, instead of generics, adds billions in needless expense.

ProPublica also noted how doctors who had been terminated from state Medicaid programs for questionable prescribing patterns have continued to give patients large quantities of those same drugs through Part D.

Spurred by that report, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter Friday to Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, asking what the agency is doing about such doctors.

Several months ago, Grassley asked each state Medicaid program to explain its process for terminating doctors and notifying Medicare once it does so. In his letter to Tavenner, Grassley said he is particularly concerned that doctors can be terminated “without cause” from Medicaid and remain in good standing with Medicare.

He cited three doctors identified by ProPublica who had been suspended or terminated from Medicaid but remained large prescribers in Part D.

This practice by states, he wrote, “may speed their ability to protect Medicaid patients, but it can expose Medicare recipients to potentially unsafe medical treatment and keeps tax dollars flowing to unworthy providers,” he wrote.

Grassley found that states varied widely in how they terminated providers in Medicaid. He asked Tavenner to explain how her agency keeps track of such providers.

Jonathan Blum, principal deputy administrator of CMS, said in a statement that his agency takes fraud in Part D seriously and is committed to making improvements. "We look forward to working with Congress and the HHS Inspector General to continue to protect beneficiaries and taxpayers from Medicare fraud, waste and abuse," he wrote.

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December 26th, 2013

12/26/2013

0 Comments

 
FROM PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES TO PUBLIC K-12, PLEASE FIGHT THE CAPTURE OF OUR MOST DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION-----PUBLIC EDUCATION!!!!!

MARYLAND IS GROUND ZERO FOR THE WORST OF THIS AND ALL OF THE CURRENT CANDIDATES ARE NEO-LIBERALS AND WILL CONTINUE THE PRIVATIZATION!



This is what is being made of our public universities as they have been tied to corporations as R and D extensions and now all academic research is tainted with the drive for profit. Maryland and O'Malley are ground zero for this and we need to dismantle these connections so we can go back to being one of the strongest systems of education in the world!

In Maryland, Johns Hopkins has been a corporation for this past decade and has used a trillion dollars in Federal, state, and local taxes to build a private global corporation and still pays no taxes.  THIS IS AN ANATHEMA TO PUBLIC AND DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION AND NEEDS TO BE REVERSED.


I listened as corporate NPR stated that a university in Kentucky was installing upscale dorms on campus with the goal of eliminating all of the old ones and charging high dorm costs to students.....obviously costing out the lower/middle class.  Recruiting those foreign students is the goal.  THIS WOULD HAPPEN SAYS NEO-LIBERAL NPR!  OH, REALLY????

Obama sent hundreds of billions of dollars in 'stimulus' funding to universities to do this-----it was a goal to make universities exclusive.  Now, labor and justice have campuses with strong facilities that need to come back to the people.  We can bring costs back down by using all of the corporate structures for our K-12 education extensions of the classrooms and allow our lower/middle class students quality dorms and classrooms on the cheap!


Please consider what all of this buildup of our public universities as corporate partners will look like as we return them to the public education mission.  Ending all of the administrative connections between university, corporations, and NIH and other Federal funding agencies will drop the costs of tuition....all of the costly product production research will be returned to the simplicity of basic research.  This is towards where we need to go. 

WE ARE NOT COMPETING WITH THE WORLD....WE ARE GROWING OUR DOMESTIC ECONOMY AND MAKING OUR COUNTRY STRONG FROM THE INSIDE OUT!

As MarketPlace Money finally admitted, the movement against Race to the Top is strong and growing.  No one wants it.  When you hear that over 40 states signed on that was because Obama made Federal funding for education tied to Race to the Top.  States signed on for the money!


Just an FYI----the NIH is now as heavily securitized as a military base and seems to be for corporate eyes only!!!

Berkeley training helps researchers 'work around' potential conflicts


By David Heathemail 6:00 am, December 20, 2013 Updated: 6:15 am, December 20, 2013 17likes22tweets1 commentE-mailPrint Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington in May 2013.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Lauded public health researcher also worked for industry, revealing entanglements of science


By David Heath December 20, 2013 BERKELEY, Calif. --

A faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, wanted to secure a National Institutes of Health grant to benefit his startup company.

That might be a problem, university officials in charge of complying with NIH’s conflict-of-interest rules said. Their solution? Resubmit the application and list another faculty member as the researcher. The academic withdrew the application instead.

This real example was presented in a September 2011 training video, posted on YouTube, showing how university officials help researchers avoid having to disclose possible financial conflicts of interest to the federal agency funding their research.

Records detail another case this year in which a professor said it was “highly likely” his company would license any technology produced from his NIH-funded research. Berkeley officials saw no conflict.

To some, such cases raise questions about how stringently UC Berkeley enforces NIH’s conflict-of-interest rules. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said they also raise questions about whether the NIH should leave enforcement to universities.

Concerns that financial entanglements can taint research prompted the NIH in August 2011 to strengthen its rules requiring disclosure of financial conflicts. The new rules expanded the definition of such conflicts and required more reporting to NIH.

“NIH can continue to rewrite conflict of interest rules, but the rules won’t do any good unless there’s a way to make them stick,” Grassley told the Center for Public Integrity. “Research institutions that look the other way on conflicts of interest appear free to do so knowing NIH will take them at their word.”

The NIH declined to comment on UC Berkeley’s practices or to respond to Grassley’s comments. In a written statement, a spokesperson said, “NIH strengthened the key provisions of the regulations and added accountability and transparency to send a clear message that NIH is committed to promoting objectivity in the research it funds.”

The issue of conflicts of interest in research is complex. Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980, allowing nonprofit organizations and small businesses with federal research grants to own the patents on their discoveries. Yet studies suggest financial conflicts can bias research findings.

The theory in the scientific community is that you can manage conflicts to reduce bias, and a common way to do that is to require public disclosure. NIH requires schools to investigate and manage possible conflicts; under the new rules, it directs schools to explain how it is managing the conflicts.

Graham Fleming, UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for research, said the very nature of research is to make discoveries that aid the public.

“Conflict of interest is something we take very seriously. We don’t aim to eliminate it. In fact that would be counterproductive. What we aim to do is to manage the conflict of interest,” he said.

A standard way to manage a conflict is to name another professor without a financial stake as the lead researcher, something that the school would disclose to NIH, Fleming said. By naming a new researcher, he said, the conflict is eliminated.  oh really????  So, having corporate executives on each other's boards solves those conflicts?

In the UC Berkeley training video, Jyl Baldwin, coordinator of the university’s conflict-of-interest committee, says situations like this are "rare." The committee's goal, she says, is to help researchers so “the research can go on the way it’s proposed without causing any headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle."

Baldwin also said, “For certain programs, [the Department of Energy] also has a financial disclosure requirement. We’ve found a way to work around that — I shouldn’t say that; it sounds negative, or sounds manipulative. We found a way to handle the DOE disclosure requirements.”

The school’s website and the training video suggest that in some cases the university determines there is no conflict of interest even when the professor has a financial stake in the research.

“Is a financial interest automatically a conflict of interest? Not necessarily,” says UC Berkeley’s website. “This may be a matter of semantics. Some argue that any financial interest in a company automatically puts the individual into a situation where there is a conflict with his or her research responsibilities.”

NIH rules say a researcher has a significant conflict of interest if the researcher is paid more than $5,000 or owns stock in a private company with interest in the research. Sometimes, that standard is put to the test.

In April, genetics professor Andrew Dillin disclosed to UC Berkeley officials that he gets paid $90,000 a year and owns 2 million shares – valued at $200,000 – of Proteostasis Therapeutics, a company he co-founded to develop new drugs for people with cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s disease. Dillin said it was “highly likely” the company would license any technology arising from the $387,000 research grant he was seeking from NIH.

The school’s conflict-of-interest committee concluded there was no conflict and that no disclosure needed to be made to NIH. The research was not within the current “focus” of the company, the head of the committee wrote.

Even so, the committee said it would be “prudent” for Dillin to disclose his company ties to students in his laboratory and when presenting his research in talks or publications.

Asked why the committee suggested Dillin disclose ties to his students but not to the NIH, Fleming referred the question to university spokesman Dan Mogulof. Because the committee found no conflict of interest, Mogulof explained in an email, there was no requirement for Dillin to disclose his company ties to anyone.

“In other words, the Committee recommended that Prof. Dillin take steps beyond those required by federal regulations,” Mogulof wrote. Dillin did not respond to an interview request.

NIH rules say that even in cases where the university has more stringent conflict of interest rules than NIH, it must still disclose how it will manage the conflict.

The NIH had initially proposed that schools post all financial disclosures from researchers on university websites. But in the final rules, that proposal was changed to releasing the records, when requested, within five business days.

It took UC Berkeley more than two months to release Dillin’s disclosures following a Center for Public Integrity public records request. The school’s public-records officer said NIH’s five-day rule didn’t apply because the school determined there was no conflict.

Universities have their own conflict in trying to police researchers because they get a cut of research dollars, said Paul Thacker, a fellow at Harvard University and a former investigator for Grassley specializing in conflicts of interest in research.

School officials don’t fear retaliation from the NIH, Thacker believes, because the agency doesn’t have a history of cracking down.

The Center requested interviews with conflict-of-interest officials at NIH for weeks, but the agency declined. The NIH would not talk about its history of enforcing conflict-of-interest rules and said it had no data on how many times it had taken action against researchers or universities for failing to disclose conflicts.

Grassley said that despite the recent changes in NIH rules, more needs to be done.

“An effective enforcement mechanism might require legislation," he said, "since NIH either can’t or won’t get tough enough on its own.”


________________________________________

Stop allow global corporate politicians to define the goals of public education.  We are not in a race to compete with other nations for achievement.  We are a democracy with education as a tool towards making people good citizens and leaders in their communities.....well, that is where we used to be and that is towards where the American people are going.

We did need to return to rigor and accountability in K-college with teaching and student achievement.  The education reforms in the 1980s by Reagan and Clinton deliberately undermined the education system that was best in the world for just that by taking textbooks out of the classrooms and requiring calculators by used in teaching math----THAT WAS WHAT CREATED THE PROBLEM AND WE SIMPLY NEED TO REVERSE THIS.....NO TESTING AND EVALUATIONS OR COMMON CORE NEEDED.  We are a nation of diversity and if we allow our humanities to become COMMON CORE directed we are eliminating that freedom and diversity and handing all information distribution to those 1% wanting that control!


The problem with evaluations centered on student performance is that no classroom is standard and no school is standard.....THERE IS NO STANDARD TO EVALUATE. 


The Education Story The Numbers Don’t Tell

Education Opportunity Network

As 2013 closed out, the education world was roiled by yet another controversy over the calculation and interpretation of statistical data used to govern teachers and school services.

This controversy, coming to us from the nation’s capital, involved, according to the report in The Washington Post, “Faulty calculations of the ‘value’ that D.C. teachers added to student achievement in the last school year.”

“The evaluation errors,” noted reporter Nick Anderson, “underscore the high stakes of a teacher evaluation system that relies in part on standardized test scores to quantify the value a given teacher adds to the classroom.”

This controversy falls into a long line of previous ones stretched across the year. Now that the results from tests are being used to judge just about anything having to do with education, debates over education policy have become and endless back-and-forth over whether the data are reliable and what, if anything, they reveal.

Whether it’s “white suburban moms” disputing their children’s standardized test results or pundits parsing out the meaning of PISA, the nation has descended into a heated cross-fire over the impact and relevance of education statistics brandished by “reform” advocates.

While these arguments rage over the relevancy of test scores in policy making, some are now questioning, to use the operative phrase in Anderson’s sentence above, whether it’s even possible or preferable “to quantify the value” in education.

The whole idea that teaching and learning is a pursuit that can be expressed and judged by numbers and rankings, which seems to be a forgone conclusion to policy makers and economists, is increasingly an unsettled matter to most Americans. What they see instead more and more looks like a nation turning its back on the well being of students – especially those who are most in need.

The Impact Of IMPACT?

The reported problems with D.C.’s teacher evaluation system are just the latest example of the problems that occur when test data become a source for policy direction.


The mistake affected 44 teachers, or about 10 percent of faculty the calculations apply to. But the overall effect is way more significant when taking into account the numbers of students who are linked to each teacher.

Further any report of flaws with the teacher evaluations in D.C. is apt to reverberate across the country. The district’s system, known as IMPACT, was created under the administration of Michelle Rhee and has been touted by education advocates aligned with Rhee as a model for the nation.

As the Post’s Valerie Strauss, who also reported on the IMPACT controversy, noted, “Such evaluation has become a central part of modern school reform … In some places around the country, teachers received evaluations based on test scores of students they never had.”

The Truth Behind TUDA?

The reported problems with IMPACT fell on the heels of yet another statistical data dump from the week before.

That statistical disgorge is known as the Trial Urban District Assessment, or TUDA, which analyzed the performance of students in some cities with populations of 250,000 who took part in the National Assessment for Educational Progress.

The education reporter for The Huffington Post, Joy Resmovits, noted, “Washington, D.C. – a standard bearer for what’s known as the education reform movement since former school chancellor Michelle Rhee’s tumultuous tenure at D.C. Public Schools – was the only city to show score increases in both grades in both subjects since 2011.”

So Michelle Rhee’s organization, StudentFirst, immediately issued a press release claiming D.C. schools as one of the “bright spots” that show “what we can learn” from TUDA. First among the lessons was, you guessed it, IMPACT.

Of course, it’s entirely unclear how students analyzed by TUDA – just fourth and eighth graders in two subjects – were in any way affected by IMPACT. Other explanations for D.C.’s superior results seem equally if not more plausible.

For instance, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, pointed to changes in early childhood education and the city’s demographics as factors. “This is the first group of 4th graders that actually had pre-kindergarten. So what this is saying to us is that all-day kindergarten and prekindergarten is one of the most important investments.” And the city is ” becoming more and more middle class.”

Meanwhile, as Resmovits noted in her article, “Statisticians warn against citing these gains as evidence of efficacy or inadequacy in debates about particular school reforms. ‘It’s not a causal model,’ said Mark Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes of Research, who used to oversee the Education Department’s research arm. ‘I get very leery when people say that ‘This shows that X happened.’”

Nevertheless, there seems little hesitancy to jump into these statistical suppositions games and then use them to craft whole policies for our children.

PISA Palaver

Perhaps no assessment data draws more media attention and generates more causal explanations derived from test results than the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA.

This year’s PISA results were no exception as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan staged PISA Day, a media event that spent most of five hours arguing that the scores were reasons to get behind his pet policies. And Michelle Rhee took to the pages of Time magazine to use the PISA scores as an opportunity to claim the countries that are excelling academically are doing similar things to what she espouses.

As Rutgers professor Bruce Baker explained at his blog, the primary use of PISA data in the public policy discourse is “to ram through ill-conceived, destructive policies.”


Baker – whose edu-stat crunching has been compared to “Nate Silver’s influential and statistically nuanced election forecast blog posts” – concluded about PISA, “Except for showing that economic conditions matter … simple rankings of countries by their PISA scores aren’t particularly insightful.”

“Nothin’ brings out good ol’ American statistical ineptitude like the release of NAEP or PISA data,” Baker continued in a different blog post. Any gains or losses on these tests, Baker contended are less a matter of proving a school system is doing better “because it allowed charter schools to grow faster, or teachers to be fired more readily by test scores,” and more a simple matter that swings in results “are cohort average score differences which reflect differences in the composition of the cohort as much as anything else.”

To mock the whole idea that these test results provide grand insights into “what works” in education, Matt Chingos, writing for the conservative education policy center Education Next, had a bit of year-end holiday fun and contrived “a rigorous empirical analysis that measures the causal effect of Christmas on student achievement.” His conclusion – including the mandatory Excel graph! – that “student learning rises more or less in lock-step with the amount of holiday spending” is about as convincing as what Duncan, Rhee, and other “reform” leaders pull from the data. But that doesn’t seem to stop them.

Testing data’s absurd level of impact on the nation’s entire education endeavor would be a laughing matter if there weren’t such tragic situations occurring on the ground in schools.


Back To Reality

While the nation’s education leaders get lost in a numbers game, there’s ample evidence from real life experiences that our children’s education destinies are becoming more endangered.

As The New York Times recently reported, “Many schools face unwieldy class sizes and a lack of specialists to help those students who struggle academically, are learning English as a second language, or need extra emotional support.”

According to the article elementary class sizes in parts of California have swollen to 30 students and more. The public school district in Dallas, Texas this year sought state permission for over 200 schools to increase class size of 22 students for kindergarten through fourth grade. Some high schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County in North Carolina have class sizes of as many as 40 students. And in Cobb County, Ga., average class sizes in fourth and fifth grades are now about 33 students.

The problem arises from the fact that “public schools employ about 250,000 fewer people than before the recession” while enrollments have increased by more than 800,000 students.

“The cutbacks have been particularly pronounced in less affluent school districts,” Times reporter Motoko Rich noted.

On nearly the same day, another New York City newspaper, The Daily News, reported on the alarming state of education services to minority students in the system. “Black and Hispanic high school students are “getting stiffed,” wrote the reporter, based on data provided by the school system.

“On average, white and Asian students attend high schools with twice as many Advanced Placement courses and almost twice as many science labs compared with schools attended by black and Hispanic students.

“Black and Hispanic students also have fewer science subjects available in their high schools and fewer arts classes and rooms … They’re also less likely to have a library, medical office or gym in their school buildings.”

Similarly, a report in a Boston news outlet looked at schools in California and noted, “Hispanic students in general are getting worse educations than their white peers. Their class sizes are larger, course offerings are fewer and funding is lower. The consequence is obvious: lower achievement.”


The Times article caused education historian Diane Ravitch to write on her blog, “We hear so-called reformers proclaim about the importance of teacher evaluation, merit pay, and test scores, but I have yet to hear any of them complain about budget cuts and lack of staff for the arts, physical education, foreign languages, libraries, and so on … How are schools supposed to enact any of their proposals when teachers are stressed out with crowded classrooms?”

How indeed?

2014: A Chance To Change The Conversation

When the last Great Big Education Innovation called No Child Left Behind descended on America’s beleaguered schools, the intention was to address the variance in test score data among K-12 students.

NCLB was supposed to close what was, and still is, called the Achievement Gap. But it’s now widely understood that the whole enterprise was an utter failure. The best that NCLB proponents can offer is that it “woke the country” to the stark differences between the academic attainment of African American and Hispanic school children and their white and Asian peers.

But anyone who needed “awakening” then has doubtless fallen back into slumbers as the country has drifted further and further into a vast sea of segregated schools and education inequality.

Rather than seeking a different course of action, reform-minded policy makers doubled down and brought us even more destructive ways to use test score data, while real experiences of students in actual classrooms – especially in our most financially strained, underserved communities – were ignored.

2014, an election year, offers an opportunity to change that conversation. The American people are ready for it.

__________________________________________
Think Common Core is not about privatization of universities?  It is universities like Stanford, MIT, and Harvard that are writing Common Core education supplements and tests and patenting them and having these schools pay for the pleasure of using them to implement these reforms at break-neck speed.

Common Core started with Bush-Cheney and when they said history would treat their administration kindly-----THEY WERE WRITING THE COMMON CORE SECTION IN HISTORY!




Diane Ravitch and the Angry Rebellion against Common Core Wielding her influential blog as a weapon, this 75-year-old activist has created a powerful network united by revulsion against top-down, elite policymaking.

by Mark Funkhouser | December 16, 2013

Since the Common Core State Standards for education were first proposed in 2009, 45 states have adopted them. As major public-policy initiatives go, this has been a hurtling train, backed by powerful people and institutions, that has been roaring down the track a breakneck speed.

Now, however, comes the backlash. In at least 17 states there is some kind of serious movement against the Common Core standards. The media have largely portrayed the push to scrap them as the product of a Republican repudiation of any and all things related to a federal government headed by Barack Obama. This is not true. The antipathy to Common Core is part of a much larger rejection of the dominant education-reform paradigm, supported by leaders of both political parties, that embraces charter schools, vouchers, more testing of students, increased accountability for teachers and hostility to teachers' unions.

The movement against Common Core is an angry rebellion that shares with the Occupy and Tea Party movements a revulsion toward top-down policy-making emanating from the nation's elite. At the center of the rebellion, and its animating force, is a 75-year-old grandmother named Diane Ravitch who once supported many of the elements of education reform that she now despises. Whether you agree with her or not, it is clear that Ravitch is an incredible political phenomenon, the likes of which we have not seen in a long time. As much as anyone I have ever seen, she has taken up the tools of social media and wielded them powerfully to try to change the course of American history. And she has managed to do it without staff or funding.

It's worth considering how she has done this.

First, it should be noted that she is a formidable person who herself has been near the levers of establishment power most of her adult life. She was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution until she went rogue. She has a Ph.D. from Columbia University and is a research professor of education at New York University. She was an assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the National Assessment Governing Board. She has published 10 books, the most recent being this fall's Reign of Error: the Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools. It made the New York Times best-seller list within days of its release, fueled I'm sure by the buildup for it among the readers of her blog.

The blog is a phenomenon unto itself. Ravitch blogs between five and 20 times a day, usually with links to local-media articles or pieces written by others within her network. In November, 18 months after she launched it, the blog recorded more than 8 million page views. She sometimes has others post on her blog. She says one of those, a post entitled "I Quit" written by a fed-up North Carolina schoolteacher, is the most popular ever to appear on her blog, garnering 66,000 page views the day it went up in October 2012 and more than 250,000 as of this month.

Her readership has evolved into a national network with bloggers and correspondents in virtually every state and every major city who use her site to link with and support each other's efforts. At least two national organizations have sprung up from the interactions of her readers: the Badass Teacher Association, co-founded by Mark Naisson, a historian and proudly radical professor at Fordham University, and the Network for Public Education, which actively engages in school-board fights around the country, advocating and raising money for candidates who share Ravitch's views. Ravitch herself keeps up a grueling schedule of public appearances, often speaking to large crowds and sometimes debating advocates of the reform paradigm such as former Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Ravitch is a relentless and focused policy entrepreneur who has said that she goes at it so hard because it is important -- she believes that public education is essential to democracy and faces an existential threat from the reformers -- and because she doesn't have much time, an apparent allusion to her age.


The fact that she is willing to wage such an intense fight to change the course of a major public-policy initiative evidences deep faith and confidence in the American system of governance. Others who want major policy changes should also embrace that faith and take some lessons from how Diane Ravitch operates.





_____________________________________________

This privatization of our public universities is a direct attack on our democratic society and it is neo-liberals taking the lead in this.  Maryland has almost completely privatized all of public higher education!


The Lumina Foundation, Brice Harris, City College of San Francisco and the privatization of higher education

By Danny Weil on December 23, 2013 4:00 am

  Readers can take a look at the mendacious and sophistic Brice Harris, the former Chancellor of the Los Rios College.  He is a ‘Lumina Foundation’ made man.  If you do not know what Lumina is, do Google ‘Danny Weil and Lumina’ and you will find out fast that this criminal syndicate, formerly with Sallie Mae or the ‘outfit’, groomed and paid Harris so he could become Chancellor of ALL the community or should I say, corporate colleges and universities?



These paid supplicants are all on board with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Wall Street hucksters looking to stuff and engorge themselves on the $650 Billion dollar educational industry they have created.

  From charter schools to vouchers, from phony Student Success Outcomes (paid for by Lumina) to privatized for profit drive-by colleges, these miscreants have no morals, show no empathy and are in the process of caving the public commons while they feast on hefty CEO salaries and destroy public education.


 
It’s a shame, really but understandable.  America is a banana republic now; in-sourcing and outsourcing labor so the ruling class has no need for an educated populace.  In fact, after the 1960’s, they fear it!

 
No, obedience training is again the norm.  Harris is just one in a long line of courtiers for power.  He and Jerry Brown (the one candidate whom has taken more money from for-profit predatory colleges than any other political sharpie) are all invested in the demolition of the public commons.  This is a corporate democratic plan (http://www.dailycensored.com/the-obama-2020-plan-for-education-chump-change-you-cant-believe-in/) (http://www.dailycensored.com/part-two-the-obama-2020-plan-for-higher-education-chump-change-you-cant-believe-in/


0 Comments

December 24th, 2013

12/24/2013

0 Comments

 
HAPPY HOLIDAY!!!!

IF YOUR POLITICAL PUNDITS AND MEDIA ARE NOT SHOUTING OUT ABOUT THE RECOVERY OF MASSIVE FRAUD----THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR YOU AND ME!!!! REMEMBER, WHEN A GOVERNMENT SUSPENDS RULE OF LAW, IT SUSPENDS STATUTES OF LIMITATION!


If your incumbent is not shouting all of the issues below, they are neo-liberals or they are not effective as our representative.  Please make these issues central to any campaign and if your candidates are not shouting loudly-----RUN IN ALL PRIMARIES YOURSELVES!  We need Mr and Ms Smith going to Washington,
the state house, and city hall!  If you go with a neo-liberal then you are saying bring on TPP and take citizenship away from all Americans.  Your children will not be the middle-class you are today!

I will be enjoying the holiday tomorrow and hope your family is enjoying the season.
  The New Year needs to see millions of Americans making resolutions to become active-----shouting loudly and strongly-----and working for justice and a return to democracy and first world status in America!!!

REgarding Americans impoverished by corporate fraud:

Corporate NPR and WYPR does a great job making the prevalence of impoverishment apparent as the US moves from democratic to autocratic with the suspension of Rule of Law. They make sure to report citizens in the sorriest of states.  Do you hear citizens who are enraged and demanding change?  NO.....NOT ON CORPORATE MEDIA.   We are thankful to all of the public media that are filling the place of a once public NPR/APM and they are not showing sadness and hardship, they are showing people enraged by the stealing of public wealth by VISIGOTHS.

Indeed, Americans have never been richer because when the 1% steal public money and treat it as their own.......you know the investment of our money will reap profits! That is what has happened these Obama years. As I showed earlier, government watchdogs have calculated that each and every American citizen is owed a few hundreds of thousands of dollars from these massive corporate frauds, plus the damages and pain and suffering. Corporate NPR does a great job documenting the pain and suffering. Tens of trillions coming back to government coffers, public Trusts, and individual pockets over the next decade will go far in rebuilding the US middle-class and create again a healthy domestic economy!

Below you see what these families losing their homes and jobs and as a result their wealth are due -------because all of this happened as a result of the massive corporate frauds of last decade. Think spilling a cup of hot coffee brought a large settlement------we are talking tens of trillions of dollars in just damages and pain and suffering!


IF YOUR MEDIA OUTLET AND POLITICAL PUNDIT IS NOT SHOUTING LOUDLY AND STRONGLY THAT AMERICANS ARE WEALTHIER NOW THAN EVER BEFORE------IF THEY ARE NOT SHOUTING ABOUT THIS MASSIVE MOVEMENT OF WEALTH AS CRIMINAL AND NEEDING JUSTICE-----THEY ARE NEO-LIBERALS WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT!


All we need to do is run and vote for labor and justice to reinstate Rule of Law and get this recovery under way!!!

Pain and suffering
From Wikipedia

Pain and suffering is the legal term for the physical and emotional stress caused from an injury (see also pain and suffering).

Some damages that might be under this category would be: aches, temporary and permanent limitations on activity, potential shortening of life, depression or scarring. When filing a lawsuit as a result of an injury, it is common for someone to seek money both in compensation for actual money that is lost and for the pain and stress associated with virtually any injury. In a suit, pain and suffering is part of the "general damages" section of the claimant's claim, or, alternatively, it is an element of "compensatory" non-economic damages that allows recovery for the mental anguish and/or physical pain endured by the claimant as a result of injury for which the plaintiff seeks redress.

Apart from money damages awarded in trial, money damages are also given informally outside the judicial system in mediations, arbitration (both of which may be court annexed or non litigated claims) as well as in routine insurance settlements. Individual claimants or those represented by lawyers often present demands to insurers to settle for money. These demand for bodily injury compensation monies often set out damages that are similarly used in the court litigated pleadings. Demands are usually written summaries of a claimant's medical care and the facts which resulted in the injury.
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Damages will be all of the national debt of $17 trillion dollars and all of the losses to retirements, pensions, public Trusts, and government coffers from lost revenue and the gains that could have been made had the money been with the victims of these crimes. This will be tens of trillions of dollars as the wealth accumulated from the BEAR to BULL Wall Street stock market was mostly from these ill-gotten gains. WE STRUCK IT BIG WHEN WALL STREET ACTED AS IF OUR MONEY WAS ITS OWN!!!!

Damages

From Wikipedia,

In law, damages are an award, typically of money, to be paid to a person as compensation for loss or injury.[1] The rules for damages can and frequently do vary based on the type of claim which is presented (e.g., breach of contract versus a tort claim) and the jurisdiction.

At common law, damages are categorized into compensatory damages and punitive damages. Compensatory damages are further categorized into special damages, which are economic losses such as loss of earnings, property damage and medical expenses, and general damages, which are noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering and emotional distress.
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As I have shown, government watchdogs place the amount of corporate fraud at tens of trillions and we have international investigative journalists following the fraud and off-shoring of illegal gains in preparation of Rule of Law being reinstated in the US. Everyone can be an investigative journalist in your own communities by finding and recording the movement of money lost to government coffers through fraud. In Maryland, that keeps organizations like mine very busy. I thank all that work on this with me!

Fraud

From Wikipedia

In criminal law, fraud is intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent, and verb is defraud. Fraud is a crime and a civil tort at common law, though the specific criminal law definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud.[1]

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How do you settle public malfeasance like the FED and failure to work within its stated mission? Well, first we need to recognize that the inaction of our public officials are indeed an obvious and deliberate act against the interest of the public. That is easy for the FED as we have shown Greenspan and Geithner deliberately allowed massive fraud in the mortgage industry to continue because the goal was not only movement of public wealth to the top earners, but a seizing of private property in real estate from the middle-working class to the top so control of real estate is lost to most of American citizens. Obama has pretended that none of these massive frauds occurred as has his Attorney General Holder. This holds true down to the state and local level as Executives in office are responsible for protecting public interests.

So, we not only need to prosecute these public officials, we need to seize their wealth for the failure to protect and for deliberately aiding and abetting fraud. Obama and Holder------O'Malley and Gansler-----Rawlings-Blake and Bernstein------


ALL OF THESE PUBLIC OFFICIALS CHARGED WITH PROTECTING THE PUBLIC WILL BE GUILTY OF PUBLIC MALFEASANCE AND THEIR WEALTH WILL BE MADE PUBLIC.

Misfeasance in public office

From Wikipedia
Misfeasance in public office is a cause of action in the civil courts of England and Wales and certain Commonwealth countries. It is an action against the holder of a public office, alleging in essence that the office-holder has misused or abused his power. The tort can be traced back to 1703 when Chief Justice Sir John Holt decided that a landowner could sue a police Constable who deprived him of his right to vote (Ashby v White).[1] The tort was revived in 1985 when it was used so that French Turkey producers could sue the Ministry of Agriculture over a dispute that harmed their sales.

Generally, a civil defendant will be liable for misfeasance if the defendant owed a duty of care toward the plaintiff, the defendant breached that duty of care by improperly performing a legal act, and the improper performance resulted in harm to the plaintiff.
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December 23rd, 2013

12/23/2013

0 Comments

 
I am returning to the issues of TPP and Immigration Bill which ties perfectly with the labor action we had in Maryland this weekend.  This is an ongoing campaign at the BWI Airport with most businesses tied to the airport.

Why are Congress and the President taking up things like health care reform, education reform, and seeming to ignore all Rule of Law on public justice since the crash?  THEY ARE ACTING AS IF TPP IS ALREADY LAW!  But wait-----our pols are already shouting they weren't part of these negotiations and yet, in a neo-liberal state like Maryland the laws that come with TPP have been operating since the crash. 

YOUR POL NOT ONLY KNOWS ABOUT TPP-----BUT HAS BEEN NEGOTIATING FOR BUSINESSES IN MARYLAND IN THESE DEALS.


How is the labor and justice situation below like the TPP and Immigration Bill passed by the Senate?  Let's look what is happening.

TPP says any nation in this trade agreement must not allow its laws to effect a global corporation's ability to earn profit, so a labor law that protects an employee that will cost a global corporation money will not be enforced.  Categorizing workers as independent contractors when they are just employees of a corporation is illegal but with TPP that global corporation will claim those US laws hinder its ability to earn profit.

THIS IS WHAT TPP DOES....ALLOWS ALL GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO CIRCUMVENT ALL OTHER NATION'S CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS.

Remember, the 1% now no longer look at the world as nations but markets and the TPP does that.  The 1% in all of these countries signing on do not care that their Constitutions are usurped-----they are the ones with global corporations reaping profits from this treaty!  So, Obama has signed on to this TPP with the knowledge he is working to end US sovereignty and that is a COUP against the US Constitution and American people.  THIS IS SERIOUS STUFF FOLKS!  This is why we did not received any public justice as all of our wealth was stolen through corporate fraud and it is why corporations are controlling all public policy-writing in Baltimore.  Johns Hopkins is that global corporation thinking it has overthrown the US Constitution......but it hasn't.

THIS ENTIRE ACTION IS ILLEGAL AND A COUP AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION AND CAN BE REVERSED AS SUCH.  THE TREATY JUST NEEDS TO BE DEEMED ILLEGAL WHEN RULE OF LAW IS REINSTATED.....EASY PEASY!


JUST RUN AND VOTE FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE IN ALL PRIMARIES AND WE CAN REVERSE THIS!


So, these workers being exploited by a French corporation is an example of what is to come if TPP is enacted.  You will notice that all of the infrastructure development that will come as a stimulus next year will involve these global corporations which bring in immigrant labor and tie them to these same kinds of contracts as has happened with these African immigrants tied to VEOLA through Super Shuttle at BWI.  This is happening all over the country!


VEOLA brings these African immigrants to the US to work for their corporation with the idea that working in the US is a great thing and VOILA----these workers are calling themselves slaves-----and they are!  That will happen on these infrastructure jobs as well.  Notice every time an immigrant is brought to do these jobs a domestic worker is not employed and notice that these transportation jobs used to be public sector jobs with employees paid well and having good benefits!  SEE WHY WE NEED TO FIGHT FOR STRONG PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS? 


ALL OF MARYLAND'S PUBLIC WORKS ARE NOW BEING DONE WITH EXPLOITED IMMIGRANT LABOR OR PRISON LABOR.  SOUND THIRD WORLD TO YOU? 

The Immigration Bill passed by the neo-liberal Senate was never about justice for immigrants.....it was always about bringing these immigrants over with global corporations doing work in the US and allowing them to work.  This is what is happening to these African workers and it is happening with our Hispanic workers as well.  THINK THIS IS NOT COMING TO MIDDLE-CLASS WORKERS---this is what is happening in Johns Hopkins as office workers are now a victim of this same independent contractor scheme.  After they get the same treatment as these Super Shuttle employees, the Hopkins' office workers are earning almost nothing as well. 

THIS KIND OF EMPLOYMENT IS PERVASIVE IN MARYLAND AND ALL NEO-LIBERAL STATES.  SO, IT IS NOT THE TEA PARTY THAT IS KILLING LABOR-----IT IS THE NEO-LIBERALS!


'The TPP foreign investor privileges would provide foreign firms greater "rights" than those afforded to domestic firms.


This includes a "right" to not have expectations frustrated by a change in government policy. Claiming such radical privileges, foreign corporations have launched cases against environmental, energy, consumer health, toxics, water, mining and other non-trade domestic policies that they allege undermine their "expected future profits."


Learn more: http://bit.ly/HRIWYp'
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Why You Should Be Outraged About the TPP TRADE, 16 December 2013

by Luke Bacon - NewMatilda

Openness in negotiation is a key component of democratic politics. Without it, the public can’t make sound decisions. The anti-democratic nature of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

As governments and corporations push to finalise negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), people who support wide participation in policy development should increase the pressure for open discussion.

Relegating the TPP to a “special interest” issue for online activists is a success for secrecy. Opposition to the TPP is actually in the broader interest of individuals and organisations working in health, education, human rights, journalism, ecology, welfare, workers rights and other related areas.

Its stated goals are “economic integration” and increasing “market access” but the TPP deal covers far more than trade. There are sections on labour, the environment, e-commerce, intellectual property, foreign investment, financial services, telecommunications, Investor State Dispute Settlement and more. The treaty prescribes how member states will legislate in these areas.

Negotiations started in 2010 and there is pressure to finalise the text as soon as possible. The 2013 deadline was missed this week and negotiations have been extended into January.

Only a handful of representatives from each member state are allowed access to the negotiation text. No one else, not even elected representatives outside of the negotiation team, are allowed to know what’s on the table. The negotiations themselves are “off the record”, though roughly 700 lobbyists (“advisors“), mostly representing corporate interests, do have access.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have spoken out demanding public scrutiny of public policy, signing petitions and attending protests.

Last week, Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson successfully passed a motion requesting the final treaty text be made available to the public “well before it is signed.” Since then, the Senate’s request has been refused by the Coalition who say its release would “damage Australia’s standing”.

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz made a damning assessment of secrecy in democracies for his 1999 Oxford Amnesty Lecture:

“Meaningful participation in democratic processes requires informed participants. Secrecy reduces the information available to the citizenry, hobbling their ability to participate meaningfully… voters have to be informed: they have to know what alternative actions were available, and what the results might have been.”

As far as the TPP is concerned, US trade representative Ron Kirk says secrecy from the public is needed to “preserve negotiating strength and to encourage our partners to be willing to put issues on the table they may not otherwise”.

Stiglitz addresses this position:

“The argument that public discussions — including discussions of uncertainties and mistakes — will undermine the authority of public institutions is one of the most corrosive of democratic processes. It is akin to the kinds of arguments that authoritarian regimes conventionally use. I would argue, on the contrary, that were governments to deal honestly with their citizenry, confidence in government and public institutions would increase, not decrease.”

Unfortunately, in our society, arguments for secrecy are commonplace. Immigration and asylum seeker policy, locked down under Operation Sovereign Borders, is just the most recent example of a situation where basic information must be smuggled out, so the public can see the detail of policies enacted on their behalf.

Another common defence of the TPP’s secrecy is that “this is just the usual process for trade agreements” and that negotiators are conducting private consultations, in which affected stakeholders (public interest advocates in addition to the lobbyists) can voice concerns.

Instead, as Stiglitz says, the real effect is that “the quality of decision making is thereby weakened… With more mistakes, public officials become more defensive; to protect themselves, they seek even more secrecy, narrowing in the circle still further, eroding still further the quality of decision-making.”

Public Health Lecturer Deborah Gleeson points out that, “since those being consulted don’t have much information about what’s in the agreement and aren’t permitted to view the text, meaningful input is difficult. Indeed, it’s farcical to be consulted about the details of text you haven’t seen!”

On 6 December Stiglitz published an open letter to TPP negotiators criticising the secretive nature of the negotiations, he warned that “The TPP proposes to freeze into a binding trade agreement many of the worst features of the worst laws in the TPP countries, making needed reforms extremely difficult if not impossible.”

On 13 November Wikileaks published the Intellectual Property (Rights) Chapter of the agreement, this is the secret draft negotiation text with annotations for the positions of nations on individual clauses. For the first time, we can see what is on the table and the stance our representatives are taking.

The leaked negotiation text includes clauses to expand the scope of patents to cover medical procedures, force your ISP to police your internet usage, and increase opportunities for multi-nationals to sue governments through investor-state dispute settlements. This is just the intellectual property chapter — the rest of the agreement remains in the dark.

Since the leak, Australia’s Trade Minister Andrew Robb has said “the Government will not permit any outcome in its trade negotiations which undermines the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme or Australia’s health system more generally.” However, regardless of Robb’s claims, Australia will be held to the ratified text of the TPP and in its current form it would raise the price of medicine by slowing the process to generic manufacturing.

In these negotiations — where the biggest economy in the world is playing hard-ball —how does it help our bargaining power for all negotiations to be secret? If you were really concerned with the public interest, wouldn’t you want the public there to back you up?

It proves the vital relevance of people like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Jeremy Hammond, and of Wikileaks, that the only way we could discover the deals being made on our behalf is by concerned people on the inside passing us information.

Many are already speaking out against the contempt for participatory democracy visible in the TPP negotiations. Doctors Without Borders have long recognised the effect the TPP will have on the lives of people they work with. A new website has launched with suggestions for what you can do.

Everybody has a role in opposing this attack on the public interest — even something small broadens the group involved. Support whistleblowers who risk everything so that we can know what’s going on; demand a say in the direction our laws drive us. Already the public outcry has prompted someone brave on the inside to pass out the crucial draft chapter.




Regarding ending slavery in Maryland/US:


Below you see a very important labor action you will of course not hear about on main stream media but it is significant because Hispanic language media, always there to coverage labor and justice events, is helping our local justice organizations to get the word out about the state of the state of Maryland to Hispanic families across the country. I have spoken about the Hispanic immigrants having their wages stolen and workplace abuses openly by private contractors denying immigrants the labor rights that are Constitutional rights in America. I have spoken of corporations like Johns Hopkins using Temporary Services illegally categorizing their employees as independent contractors, exploiting and stealing their wages and leaving these employees impoverished. As you read below remember this.....this describes what neo-liberals are doing in Congress with the Immigration Reform bill. These immigrants are being recruited by French VEOLA to come and work in America and as we see to be exploited labor. This immigration policy is not good.....it is very, very, very, bad and all Maryland pols backing this Immigration Bill this treatment of labor!

DO YOU HEAR ANY MARYLAND POLS SHOUTING OUT AGAINST THIS ABUSE? YET, THEY SAY THEY ARE PROGRESSIVE BECAUSE THEY ALLOW IMMIGRANTS TO COME TO MARYLAND-------TO BE EXPLOITED!




REMEMBER, ALL OF THIS IS ILLEGAL.....LAWS ARE BEING BROKEN AND STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL GANSLER, THE HEAD OF THE DLLR, Leonard J Howie, III. ASK THESE TWO MEN AND YOUR INCUMBENT NEO-LIBERAL WHERE RULE OF LAW IN MARYLAND WENT!!!!


Super Shuttle employee:

'I need more help to speak out and let the whole world know slavery is still practiced in USA today by a company called super shuttle owned by France multibillion dolars called Veolia'.



Hispan Tv Coverage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__cO21K27A
EEUU: protestan contra la esclavitud moderna
www.youtube.com
Trabajadores de una empresa que brinda servicios en los aeropuertos de EE.UU. denuncian prácticas de "esclavitud moderna" por parte de la corporación VEOLIA....

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VEOLA is known worldwide for exploitation and labor abuse so why is Governor O'Malley and the Maryland General Assembly and Baltimore City Hall handing them all of our public transportation system? THESE POLS LOVE TO EXPLOIT MARYLAND CITIZENS!

Many of these BWI Super Shuttle employees are African immigrants------OH, THAT'S RIGHT, THEY ARE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS----and must pay $35,000 in initial operating fees payable over ten years at 15% interest. Remember, they are being told this is a business they can grow just as a McDonald's franchise when in fact they are simply employees of Super Shuttle owned by VEOLA. So, each driver is paying operating expenses, airport fees, dispatch fees, insurance fees to VEOLA owned Super Shuttle. Additionally, they are paying lease payments and franchise fees TOTALING $1,200 - 2,100 EACH WEEK. The employees are paying the cost of VEOLA being in business at the BWI AIRPORT. On top of that, O'Malley and the General Assembly and Baltimore City Hall buy many of VEOLA's vehicles with taxpayer money pretending these deals are public private partnerships.

As you see below VEOLA is being used across the nation to privatize public transportation and bust public sector unions and they do it in mostly neo-liberal states like Maryland. Labor unions are organizing and we thank the local UFCW for taking up this effort on behalf of BWI Super Shuttle employees! Denver Super Shuttle employees have CWA fighting this battle and Boston labor union CWA sends their support below.




Airport Super Shuttle Drivers Join CWA after 2-Year Battle

Oct 27, 2011

After a two-year fight for a union, Super Shuttle drivers at Denver International Airport voted overwhelmingly last week for CWA representation.(*)

Overcoming two years of hostility, harassment and coercion, 94 Super Shuttle drivers at Denver International Airport finally got the chance last week to vote for a union. In a resounding victory, they voted 77-4 for representation with CWA Local 7777, which also represents 300 Union Taxi drivers at DIA.(*)

The mostly African immigrant group filed their original petition for a union election in December 2009. Attempting to frighten its drivers and derail the vote, Super Shuttle management claimed the workers were independent contractors and therefore ineligible, terminated a driver on the organizing committee, and committed numerous other unfair labor practices.(*)

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BWI Super Shuttle van drivers ‘fired’ for speaking out about working conditions

By Bill Hughes · December 22, 2013
·


Activists came out Saturday to support the BWI super shuttle van drivers, who some claim they have been fired for speaking out about poor wages and working conditions.

The drivers are “low wage workers – making minumum wages after working 18 and even 24 hours a day,” according to a statement put out from Workers Assembly.



Veolia, international corporation, (which operates at other airports on the East coast), is not treating the employees “fairly,” Workers Assembly said.

To learn more about why the activists and the workers staged a “Caravan for Justice,” at the site of the rally, and through BWI, go to their Facebook page.
Speaking on camera: Sean Collins, Sharon Black, Amy Millard


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Support from Boston School Bus Driver USW Local 9751

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=745169772178681&set=vb.100000569962368&&theaterSupport from Boston School Bus Driver USW Local 9751 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=745169772178681&set=vb.100000569962368&&theater


Denver CWA prevailed in seven ULPs it filed against management, with the NLRB eventually directing the election. It further ordered Super Shuttle to refund the drivers $65,000 in franchising fees, which the company had collected as retaliation for their union activities.(*)

District 7 Organizing Coordinator Al Kogler said Local 7777 organizer Abdi Buni, a former Union Taxi driver at DIA, did an "incredible job" of holding the Super Shuttle drivers together, and local President Lisa Bolton provided critical support.(*)


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Remember Obama appointed Maryland's DLLR from Maryland Tom Perez to National Labor Department? See why? Neo-liberals need people in positions of accountability who allow all kinds of lying, cheating, and stealing to occur and when Rule of Law is reinstated, who will be charged with Aiding and Abetting these crimes? These black and Hispanic leaders. This is why they have these jobs right now......they are the fall guys.

We all understand that it is people of color overwhelmingly feeling this abuse but as the middle class has been gutted by these massive corporate frauds everyone is now the target of abuse.
We want to shout loudly to Mr Howie and Doug Gansler that they need to do their jobs as the face of PUBLIC JUSTICE and enforce labor law and US Constitutional protections.


DO YOU HEAR YOUR DEMOCRATIC POL SHOUTING OUT AGAINST THIS----IT IS THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM YOU KNOW! IF NOT, YOU HAVE A NEO-LIBERAL RUNNING AS A DEMOCRAT!


LEONARD J. HOWIE III, Esq., Secretary of Labor, Licensing, & Regulation


Proposed, Emergency & Final Regulations
Unemployment Insurance
Occupational & Professional Licensing
Labor & Industry
Workforce Development & Adult Learning
Financial Regulation
Racing
Governor's Workforce Investment Board
Maryland Workforce Exchange
Services


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Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler

About the Office of the Maryland Attorney General

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
The Attorney General is the chief legal officer of the State. The Attorney General's Office has general charge, supervision and direction of the legal business of the State, acting as legal advisors and representatives of the major departments, various boards, commissions, officials and institutions of State Government. The Office further represents the State in all cases pending in the Appellate Courts of the State, and in the U.S. Supreme Court and lower Federal Courts.





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PLEASE KNOW THAT FLOODING THE US LABOR MARKET WITH IMMIGRANTS AND NO ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR AND JUSTICE PROTECTIONS IS AS BAD FOR IMMIGRANTS AS IT IS DOMESTIC LABOR.  THIS IS NOT A 'I HATE IMMIGRANTS STANCE' AS PROGRESSIVE WORRY-----WE WANT IMMIGRANT WORKERS PROTECTED NOW!

These laws are written in such a way that these immigrants like the Super Shuttle workers would have to stay employed consistently or be exported.  Well, look at what they are now exposed to.  These Shuttle drivers would lose their ability for citizenship by speaking out and risking getting fired.....which is the point of how these laws are written.  It traps immigrants into abusive situations like these at Super Shuttle.


IT IS NOT PROGRESSIVE TO ALLOW THESE BILLS TO PASS WHEN ALL PUBLIC JUSTICE IS SUSPENDED. 

We do not want to deny any immigrant the right to a better life, but as the current situation shows, neo-liberals do not intend to give immigrants a better life.  As progressives we need to rebuild our Rule of Law and democratic structures, ESPECIALLY THOSE PROTECTING IMMIGRANT WORKERS and wait until we can have a CITIZENSHIP NOW VOTE IN CONGRESS.  Remember, the goal with neo-liberals and neo-cons is to create a workforce in the US like they had in Asia....that is the only goal. 


IMMIGRATION JUNE 27, 2013

Why Liberals Should Oppose the Immigration Bill It's about low-wage American workers BY T.A. FRANK  New Republic

  The consensus among decent people in favor of the immigration bill making its way through Congress is so firm that expressing dissent feels a bit like taking the floor to suggest we chop down the Redwood National Park. People don’t want to hear it, and they also think you’re a nut. That makes this article one of the hardest I’ve ever had to write. It’s not that I’m afraid people will get angry; it’s that I can’t imagine anyone on my side (liberal) is open to persuasion. And, despite the vastness and complexity of the issue, I have to be brief: the Senate hopes to be done with things this week.

Sometimes, though, you just have to embrace futility.

The country I want for myself and future Americans is one that’s prosperous, cohesive, harmonious, wealthy in land and resources per capita, nurturing of its skilled citizens, and, most important, protective of its unskilled citizens, who deserve as much any other Americans to live in dignity. This bill threatens to put all of that out of reach, because it fails to control illegal immigration. The problem is not that it provides 11 million people eventual amnesty (I don’t object to that, in theory); the problem is that it sets in motion the next waves of millions. 

High levels of low-skill immigration are good for wealthy Americans and bad for poor Americans.

That is not a fashionable concern, of course. Worrying about illegal immigration today is a lot like worrying about communists in government in 1950.  It’s not that the problem isn’t legitimate or serious (there actually were, we now know, a lot of Moscow loyalists working for the U.S. government). It’s that expressing your concurrence links you to a lot of demagogues and bad actors. 

Most of America’s college-educated elites are little affected by illegal immigration. In fact, it’s often a benefit to us in terms of childcare, household help, dinners out, and other staples of upper-middle-class life. Many therefore view the problem as akin, in severity, to marijuana use—common but benign, helpful to the immigrants and minimal in its effects on Americans or anyone else. I know, because it used to be my own view.

There’s no short way to argue why I was misguided or explain how my views evolved. Oddly enough, an early important realization came to me in Hong Kong during the SARS crisis of 2003. I thought about how Hong Kong had created a flawed but remarkable city in which even low-skilled laborers such as these men and women, who were wearing masks and wiping down railings, lived far better than similar laborers on the other side of the border. I also realized that only a wall (and I didn’t much like walls) prevented millions of people on the People’s Republic of China side of the border from coming over to take these lowly jobs for a fraction of the current wage. (Hong Kong had no minimum wage at the time.) I knew I wouldn’t want these unskilled street cleaners to lose their adequate standard of living to such unbridled competition.

But if that was how I felt about protecting Hong Kong’s working class, why shouldn’t I feel that way about America’s?

Worldviews evolve slowly, of course. I read a lot research and studies. I familiarized myself with more of the literature: both immigration-skeptical work by people like Harvard’s George J. Borjas and Cornell’s Vernon Briggs and immigration-boosterish work by people like U.C. Berkeley’s David Card and U.C. Davis’s Giovanni Peri, to name a few. I read lots blogs and news stories. I started reporting on California and wrote articles that concerned immigration.  I came to believe that the boosters had many more vulnerabilities and flaws in their arguments than the skeptics. I found the theories of people like UCLA’s Ruth Milkman—who posits, for example, that illegal immigration had little to do with the decline of wages and working conditions in Los Angeles’s trucking, garment, and janitorial industries because “de-unionization…provokes native-born workers to abandon no-longer-desirable jobs, at which point immigrants then fill the vacancies”—to be unpersuasive.

I also noticed that a lot of immigration-boosterish studies—most of them, I’d say—contain telling caveats that undermine their case. For instance, buried on page 20 in Appendix Two” of this pro-legalization report touted by the Center For American Progress—trumpeted in a press release with the headline “How Immigration Reform Would Help the Economy”—is an estimate that if half of the current unauthorized labor force were deported the wage of a low-skill U.S. worker would rise by $399 a year. By contrast, legalization would raise that worker’s wage by less than half that much—and that’s assuming no further illegal immigration.   

All in all, I became convinced that high levels of low-skill immigration are good for wealthy Americans and bad for poor Americans.  Far more important, high levels of illegal immigration—when you start to get into the millions, as we have--undermines unions and labor standards, lowers wages, heightens social tensions, strains state budgets, widens income inequality, subverts the rule of law, and exacerbates class divides. The effects go far beyond wages, because few undocumented workers earn enough to cover anything close to the cost of government services (such as education for their children) they require, and those services are most important to low-income Americans. In short, it’s an immense blow to America’s working class and poor.

Most labor unions support the current legislation, of course, but few of them seem to acknowledge the possibility of a mass influx of a future illegal workforce.  In part, that’s because the SEIU and many other unions have thousands of undocumented members, and raising a fuss about enforcement or opposing the current bill would alienate their own members. It’s probably also that they believe, unrealistically, that the bill would be effective at controlling the border in the future.

And a lot of Democrats have also convinced themselves that even if there’s a wage loss to low-skilled workers, the massive new voting bloc of mostly left-leaning immigrants will ultimately help the little guy. But if millions of new Democratic voters oppose strict immigration control, then there will no Democratic support for meaningful immigration control. And generous social benefits cannot coexist with an open border.  (Nor can a more egalitarian society.)

I know that unauthorized immigrants are for the most part good, decent people. Deploring illegal immigration is not a condemnation of the immigrants themselves, anymore than deploring traffic is a condemnation of drivers. The rhetoric about hard workers trying to support their families is true, and in a perfect world we could invite everyone in without any tradeoffs. But the United States cannot take in millions upon millions of impoverished workers and hope to provide its own low-income citizens with lives of dignity or economic security.

Most of the enthusiastic endorsements I’ve read of the current Senate bill seem to assume that the problem of illegal immigration will be solved once the legislation is passed. (Chuck Schumer recently promised on the Senate floor, “illegal immigration will be a thing of the past,” a remarkable performance even by Schumer standards.) But the Congressional Budget Office projects no such thing. It sees only a 25 percent reduction in current levels.

That’s because, for all the ambitious measures listed on paper, the current bill grants near-immediate legalization in exchange for future enforcement.  That deal is okay, except that failure to enforce the law in the future would not lead to loss of legal status. In fact, the only penalty I can detect in the bill is that failure to secure the border in five years would lead to the creation of a “Border Commission” with the power to—make recommendations.  (If you care to see Marco Rubio’s defense of it, you can read it here and see if you’re convinced.) It is a large-scale replay of what we tried in 1986, when legalization was followed by lax enforcement and a much larger wave of unlawful migration. Enforcement capacity must be demonstrated before legalization is made permanent.

Enforcement of immigration law is not all that hard. Illegal immigration can never be reduced to zero, of course, but it can be brought down to levels that we had in the 1950s and 1960s, and with very little outright force.  There are plenty of means: enhanced fencing and patrolling at the southern border, E-Verify for all hiring, strict penalties for employers who hire illegally, a biometric entry/exit system, and punishment (and deportation) for entering the country illegally. Ron Unz of The American Conservative has proposed that a $12-an-hour minimum wage plus strict sanctions would greatly reduce the magnet of sweatshop employment. None of these methods could work singly, but used in concert they would bring illegal immigration down to negligible levels.  An analogy might be made to crime in Manhattan: it will never go to zero, but the rate has become so low as to cease to be alarming.

The trouble has always been political will. Every interest group has an argument against one enforcement mechanism or the other.  Farmers and small businesses and the SEIU oppose E-Verify as a “job killer;” the ACLU contends it has “enormous privacy and security risks.” Environmentalists oppose a border fence because of migrating wildlife, and the 2006 Secure Fence Act never led to completion on the ground.  Employer sanctions are unpopular with employers, who often are political donors and “job creators,” and plans in 1986 to start levying them never came to proper fruition. The biometric entry/exit system is “too expensive.” So we’ve historically compromised and done none of the above. That’s why all the “tough” measures being put into the current bill are simultaneously overblown and unserious. The Senate just voted to spend almost $40 billion on securing the southern border, when almost half of unauthorized immigrants are visa over-stayers. So why not spend a mere $5 billion to help roll out E-Verify?  Or $25 billion to implement a biometric entry/exit system?

Now politicians also seem to have become frightened of potential new voters. Calls to enforce the law, they fear, have come to be seen as anti-immigrant or xenophobic.  If that’s the state of affairs now, what is it likely to be when 11 million new beneficiaries of lax border enforcement and their families and descendants become voters? This is why the New York Times editorial page, back in 2000, when it was more cold-eyed on the subject, warned, “Illegal immigration of unskilled workers induced by another amnesty would make matters worse.”

If we intend to offer amnesty, however, we should at the very least place the burden of proof on those proposing to fix the problem. The way to do it is not by granting “provisional legal status” that can’t be revoked but, rather, by granting to all of today’s unauthorized immigrants what Obama has granted to those who were brought here as children: deferred action. Create a window of time—five or ten years—during which to implement all the current proposed border enforcement measures without any existing (non-criminal) residents having to fear penalties or deportation.  It would be a time-limited period of legalization equivalent to a temporary visa. If future illegal immigration is reduced to set agreed-upon levels (50,000 a year should be the high end), then Congress could vote to upgrade “deferred” immigrants to permanent legalization and allow them to commence a path to citizenship. If not, then they would revert to their present unauthorized status. There must be measurable benchmarks of results rather than absurd outlays, and genuine consequences must be attached to them.

Certainly, many people would resist this plan, but if so that is precisely because they know—or at least strongly suspect—that the enforcement measures in the current legislation are meaningless. So let’s make them meaningful instead.

If I have a plea to my fellow liberals more broadly, it’s that they focus more of their empathy on fellow Americans being left behind. Because we increasingly live in bubbles, many of us are at best only abstractly aware of how cruelly circumstances of unskilled Americans have deteriorated over the past few decades.  Even as these Americans have lost their well-paid manufacturing jobs, Washington has looked the other way while millions of low-skilled unauthorized immigrants have competed with them for low-skilled service jobs. The insouciance of privileged Americans toward the effects of this on life among less-privileged Americans is, in my view, a betrayal of citizenship. 

If we are to have any hope of regaining any control over our own immigration policy—which is to say, our destiny as a nation—then we must ensure that everyone has an incentive to follow the laws on who gets to be here and who does not.  Otherwise, we will shred the few remaining safety nets we have, and the dream of dignity for all American citizens will slip farther and farther, perhaps permanently, out of reach.  No matter how magnificently Chuck Schumer claims the contrary.

T.A. Frank, a frequent contributor to The New Republic, is a writer and editor in Los Angeles.





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Here is some good union news.....these contracts will allow for a real Living Wage for casino workers!  TPP WILL NOT ALLOW THIS!  What will happen with TPP is this casino will be sold to a global corporation that then claims these wages cut profits.


Living Wage Ruling Gives Queens Casino Workers a Fighting Chance

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Sandra Charles, a security officer at the Resorts World Casino in Queens, had her salary double after a labor arbitrator ruled that the casino management had to pay workers a living wage.

By RACHEL L. SWARNS Published: December 22, 2013

For the fast-food workers who demonstrated across the country this month, it is only a dream. For many economists and policy makers, it is the subject of intense debate. But there is nothing hypothetical about the living wage for Sandra Charles, a security officer and single mother. For her, it is real, tangible and gloriously life-changing.


In October, Ms. Charles and 1,374 of her colleagues at the Resorts World Casino in Queens took an unexpected leap toward the middle class when a labor arbitrator ordered the casino management to pay them a living wage, issuing a ruling that doubled their average paychecks.

Overnight, the average annual salaries of the cooks, parking attendants, slot machine workers, security guards and other low-wage staff members shot up from about $20,000 to nearly $40,000. By 2016, according to the new three-year contract signed by the casino management and the workers’ union, most employees at Resorts World will earn $60,000 a year.

You heard that right: Sixty thousand dollars a year.

In a city that boasts of its appeal to billionaires, this might not sound like much. But for the hundreds of casino workers, many of whom had relied on food stamps and second and third jobs to get by, it is nothing short of staggering. Ms. Charles still weeps when she describes how her life has changed. For her, this is a season of miracles.

“This gives us a breakthrough that no one ever dreamt of,” said Ms. Charles, 47, who no longer spends sleepless nights worrying about paying rent.

Her oldest daughter, who had dropped out of college to work, plans to enroll in classes come January. Her youngest daughter, whose prescription for eyeglasses expired nine months ago, has a brand new pair.

In the spring, Ms. Charles plans to move with her girls into a two-bedroom apartment. For the first time, she says, she will sleep in her own bedroom, not on the couch. “I can pay my bills,” she marveled. “I can save. I can take care of my kids.”

The push for a living wage has gathered steam as some unions, states and municipalities move to help struggling workers. But of the more than 130 localities that have approved living wage laws, precious few have increased salaries so drastically, said Stephanie Luce, an associate professor of labor studies at the City University of New York, who testified on behalf of the union in the arbitration hearing.

New York City’s living wage law, for instance, requires companies that receive $1 million or more in city subsidies to pay at least $10 an hour with benefits or $11.50 an hour without benefits. The casino workers, by contrast, now earn on average $20.50 an hour, plus benefits. Few campaigners are pushing for that level of pay, given concerns among some city officials and company executives about the cost of higher wages.

But Resorts World, which has been spectacularly successful, did not dispute its ability to pay the salaries sought by the union, the Hotel Trades Council. The casino, which opened two years ago in southeastern Queens, attracts 35,000 visitors a day. It posted revenues of $696.5 million in the year ended in March and its electronic slot machines averaged $432 each a day in September, considerably more than slot machines in Atlantic City, Connecticut or Las Vegas.

The contract between the casino and union went to arbitration when the two sides reached an impasse on wages and other issues. The accord is certainly singular. But it shows how a real living wage — one that allows workers to support themselves and their families without government assistance — can transform lives.

Taliea Holmes, 26, who works the slot machines and racked up thousands of dollars in debt after surgery to remove gall stones, can go to the doctor without going broke now that she has health benefits.

Craig Caras, a 42-year-old parking attendant, won’t have to moonlight as a bus driver anymore. He plans to rent a flute so his daughter can finally play an instrument at school.

Given the high cost of living in New York City, many employees will still be categorized as near poor, particularly during the first year of the agreement.

“It’s not making you rich,” Mr. Caras said. “It’s just giving you a fighting chance.”

It is also giving the Charles family a holiday like no other. In the past, the only presents under the Christmas tree have come from relatives. This year, there are gifts from Ms. Charles under the evergreen, which glimmers with stars and angels.

“When you go into the living room,” Ms. Charles said, “you feel that it’s Christmas.”


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December 22nd, 2013

12/22/2013

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My weekend activism blog includes donating to REAL PROGRESSIVE MEDIA!!!!!!  MAKE YEAR END DONATIONS THAT SUPPORTS THESE MEDIA OUTLETS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR!

There are many small REAL PROGRESSIVE outlets all across America worthy of financial support.  Please find one in your neck of the woods to support.  Also, make sure that public funding goes to public interest media and not corporate media as NPR and APM are Wall Street neo-liberalism all the time!


LOOK GLOBALLY:


DEMOCRACY NOW!!!!!


Independent, daily global news hour hosted by Amy Goodman & Juan González. Livestream 8-9am ET at democracynow.org. Airs on 1,200 TV/radio stations.MissionDemocracy Now! is a weekday, independent global news hour anchored by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González. Tune into the live broadcast Monday through Friday 8-9am ET at www.democracynow.org .

Description
Independent, weekday global news hour anchored by Amy Goodman and Juan González. Live 8-9am ET at democracynow.org. Airs on 1,200+ TV/radio/internet stations in the United States and around the world.

DONATE to Democracy Now! today at http://www.democracynow.org/donate

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LOOK NATIONALLY


Clearing the FOG:
Speaking truth to expose the forces of greed on Mondays at 11 am EST

Watch us live at UStream.tv/itsoureconomy. Visit ClearingtheFOGRadio.orgDescriptionListen live at WeActRadio.com or listen to archived shows at http://www.mixcloud.com/ClearingtheFOG/ .


Visit our website at ClearingtheFOGRadio.org and you can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes.
Watch for our articles on TruthOut.org every Wednesday.

In Baltimore, people cannot get jobs because they have criminal records. O'Malley sent 100,000 Baltimore citizens to jail under zero tolerance......people have felony records for minor offenses. Public policy keeps unemployment high.....THESE ARE ALL PRISON PIPELINE CONDITIONS. Injustice for one will become an injustice for all!Cradle to Prison Pipeline - Baltimore City Jailwww.youtube.comCradle to Prison Pipeline - exposed by Shortys Underground News Network

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Bringing you unspun news and coverage of the movement that corporate media doesn't want you to know about! What do you stand for?
Independently Produced, Individually Supported- Acronym TVwww.youtube.comDonate: http://www.patreon.com/AcronymTV Thank you to supporters of Acronym TV. Here is the deal: It is the end of the year.
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LOOK LOCALLY
:


Cradle to Prison Pipeline - Baltimore City Jailwww.youtube.comCradle to Prison Pipeline - exposed by

Shortys Underground News Network

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Bill Hughes Photography and photojournalism

  • http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=liamh2
  • http://vimeo.com/billyclubvideos/videos/... 
  • http://home.comcast.net/~liamhughes/ 
  • http://www.artistrising.com/galleries/Bi...


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Whereas the Baltimore Brew is more mainstream than I would like, they do create and allow hard investigative journalism be presented on their site.....they hold power accountable in Baltimore although they do not expose neo-liberal policy stances!


Baltimore Brew
What is it?
Baltimore Brew is a daily online journal featuring independent reporting and informed commentary about greater Baltimore. Think of us as your post-apocalyptic* source of information and insight on the city.

Who publishes Baltimore Brew?
Fern Shen is the founder, editor and publisher. Contact her at baltimore.brew@gmail.com .  Learn more about the Brew Bloggers.

What is Baltimore Brew about?
It’s about Baltimore’s neighborhoods, housing, politics, environment, real estate, downtown development, schools, transportation, crime, justice, media and whatever else seems worth covering. Books, the arts, culture, food/drink, history, interesting things to do or places to go, all may eventually be found at the Brew.


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WHO IS GETTING ALL THE FEDERAL AND CORPORATE FUNDING?

CORPORATE NATIONAL PUBLIC AND AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA-----WALL STREET ALL THE TIME.  WYPR HOSTS THESE CORPORATE MEDIA OUTLETS IN MARYLAND!



Demand that public media funding go to media that promotes public interest programming and not global corporate policy news!!!  Do you know that public media funding must go to outlets that have a majority of its funding through individual donors which WYPR does not?


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December 20th, 2013

12/20/2013

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PLEASE TAKE THIS ASSAULT ON YOUR LIBERTIES SERIOUSLY.  WHETHER IT IS THIS SURVEILLANCE OR IT IS THE POLICE BRUTALITY AND ILLEGAL ACTIONS....MARYLAND ELECTED OFFICIALS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALLOWING ALL THIS TO HAPPEN!

Do you hear Mary Pat Clarke, Maggie McIntosh, or Barbara Mikulski shouting loudly against all of the illegal activities happening in Maryland and Baltimore?  Do you hear O'Malley, Brown, Mizeur, or Gansler shouting loudly that all this is illegal?  Then why do you vote for them?  Why are you not running candidates in all primaries to replace these people with 3 MONKEY SYNDROME!!!!  Do you really want people who SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, AND SPEAK NO EVIL? 
'I have no voice says Bill Richardson', Baltimore City Council.


This article is LOL as it talks of repressive regimes Balkanizing the internet.  WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THIS US ACTION IF NOT REPRESSIVE?

Did you notice that all of the world's response to this had governments immediately seek to protect citizens from spying?  These leaders may not have cared while it was secret but at least the responded with concerns for the citizens when it was made public.  No talk of concerns for the public's loss of all privacy on the internet in the US.  These same global corporations that have earned hundreds of billions spying and selling the personal data of the public are FILLED WITH MORAL OUTRAGE THAT THEIR ABILITY TO EARN PROFITS WILL BE RUINED.  DON'T WORRY......OBAMA WILL HAVE THE TAXPAYERS PAY FOR ALL PROFITS LOST I AM SURE!


More NSA Spying Fallout: Brazilian President Snubs Obama Invitation, May Trigger Internet Balkanization

from the this-is-getting-serious dept A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt noted that the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, was angry that the NSA had been reading her private emails and text messages, and that as a result she was contemplating cancelling an imminent high-profile state visit to the US. That was before the recent revelations that the NSA had also engaged in industrial espionage at the biggest Brazilian company, Petrobras, which seems to have been the final straw: Rousseff has now formally "postponed" her trip to the US, according to the Brazilian news site O Globo (original in Portuguese.)

Despite the framing that this is merely a "postponement" until the US has provided satisfactory explanations of the NSA's behavior, it's a real slap in the face for President Obama -- in the past, no national leader would dream of snubbing the US in this way -- and a measure of how seriously the NSA's activities are affecting US standing in the world. But this is not just about symbolic actions like cancelling high-level meetings: there are also likely to be longer-term repercussions for both US companies and the whole Internet.

For example, Rousseff is making a speech next week at the opening session of the UN General Assembly in New York. According to O Globo, she will raise the issue of American spying there, and call for a ban on espionage conducted by means of the Internet. Meanwhile, an Associated Press story published by the Washington Post has some details of other actions that Rousseff intends to take in an effort to protect Brazilians from online snooping in the future:

Most of Brazil's global Internet traffic passes through the United States, so Rousseff's government plans to lay underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe and also link to all South American nations to create what it hopes will be a network free of U.S. eavesdropping. Of course, the problem is that then it will be the UK's GCHQ and other European agencies that start spying on Brazilian traffic, rather than the NSA. Here's another idea that the President of Brazil wants to see realised: Rousseff is urging Brazil's Congress to compel Facebook, Google and all companies to store data generated by Brazilians on servers physically located inside Brazil in order to shield it from the NSA.

If that happens, and other nations follow suit, Silicon Valley's bottom line could be hit by lost business and higher operating costs:
Brazilians rank No. 3 on Facebook and No. 2 on Twitter and YouTube.
Whether or not that helps to secure the personal data of Brazilians, such a move will almost certainly increase the costs for US Internet companies operating in Brazil -- more bad news for them, all thanks to the NSA. But there may be even worse in store for the Internet as a whole, as the AP article points out: The effort by Latin America's biggest economy to digitally isolate itself from U.S. spying not only could be costly and difficult, it could encourage repressive governments to seek greater technical control over the Internet to crush free expression at home, experts say. This is just what many people feared: that the leaks about the NSA's massive surveillance activities around the world -- including economic espionage -- will provide the pretext repressive regimes need in order to take complete technical control of the Internet in their countries, rather than continuing to acquiesce in its global governance, as at present. And so all the efforts by Western countries at the recent World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) to stop precisely that kind of balkanization will have been in vain.


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Isn't it interesting how the NSA whistle blowers come from Maryland?  That's because Maryland is ground zero for the NSA spying and Johns Hopkins is as much.

This article states the obvious-----WE HAVE POLITICIANS OPENLY LYING TO CONGRESS AND TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, WE HAVE AIDING AND ABETTING BY POLITICIANS, WE HAVE PROFITEERING BY POLITICIANS AND WE HAVE NO PUBLIC JUSTICE.

Again, I want to shout that the damage it to the citizens and the assault against the US Constitution and not US corporations losing markets.  The American people need to pursue all of this until justice occurs and make a mantra of loses in wealth and liberty!


NSA Spying: Whistleblowers Claim Vindication On Surveillance State Warnings

Posted: 06/06/2013 8:30 pm EDT  |  Updated: 06/06/2013 9:19 pm EDT   Huffington Post

  For years, four former National Security Agency analysts warned that the government was conducting widespread surveillance on domestic communications. Their warnings were largely ignored.

But on Thursday, after The Guardian newspaper reported that Verizon was turning over customer phone records to the intelligence agency as part of a secret court order, Kirk Wiebe had a “feeling of great gratification.”

“What we've been saying all along has proven to be so," the 68-year-old whistleblower told The Huffington Post. "Our worst fears are being realized.”

While at the NSA, Wiebe, along with Ed Loomis and Bill Binney, created a computer program that could isolate large amounts of information collected by the NSA while protecting Americans’ privacy. But the NSA ignored their program, saying “it was too invasive,” Loomis said.

"We had a solution to this entire problem that would have avoided this whole mess," Wiebe said.

Instead, the NSA chose Trailblazer, a multi-billion dollar computer program that was supposed to revolutionize how the agency analyzed communications data. Wiebe, Loomis and Binney called for an investigation into Trailblazer, citing massive waste and fraud.

In response, Binney and Wiebe were accused of leaking classified information to the press. The FBI raided their homes. Still, they continued to speak publicly about their concerns about the NSA invading Americans' privacy.

On Thursday, they had a moment of vindication as they gave interviews criticizing the NSA over a domestic surveillance program they had been warning about.

“This would appear to be the hardcore evidence that I think a lot of people needed to start to believe it,” Binney, who was at the NSA for nearly 40 years, told The Huffington Post. “It’s domestic spying, that’s what it is, on a very large scale.”

A fourth NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, criticized the court that authorized the surveillance.

“There is no need to call this the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” Drake said in an interview with Democracy Now on Thursday. “Let’s just call it the surveillance court. It’s no longer about foreign intelligence. It’s simply about harvesting millions and millions and millions of phone call records and beyond.”

Wiebe said the NSA does not need to collect all Verizon customer phone calls to fight terrorism. He said the agency was overreaching in its investigation of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers.

"If someone tells me some guy named Tsarnaev is worrisome, why would I go to the phone companies and get all the phone calls?” Wiebe said. “Ninety-nine percent of those are going to be innocent human beings."

The NSA, Wiebe said, “has got innocent people mixed in a lousy process."

Loomis said NSA Director Keith Alexander and Attorney General Eric Holder have not been truthful in their congressional testimony about the government’s domestic surveillance program.

“People are lying to Congress, and they need to be fired,” Loomis said. “Alexander needs to be fired. Eric Holder needs to be fired. They need to have criminal charges filed against them for committing perjury.”

Loomis, now 70, lives in Baltimore and spends his retirement kayaking. He said he plans to sell his house and move to Florida.

Although he was vindicated on Thursday, he was no longer relaxed. The latest news about the NSA's surveillance program “has really gotten by blood pressure up," he said.

“Why do you need to trample on the Constitution for this crazy war on terror?” Loomis said.


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We have a real World War 2 drama unraveling as Wall Street and Germany's Deutsche Bank compete for which can steal more of the world's wealth and now with this surveillance we see citizens returning to that age of Fascism for comparison. 

US mainstream media shout 'no one trusts the US anymore', speaking of world leaders.  More importantly, the American people do not trust the US government anymore!


Germany cancels surveillance pact with US

The July 8, 2013 file photo shows the former monitoring base of the U.S. intelligence organization National Security Agency (NSA) in Bad Aibling, near Munich.Fri Aug 2, 2013 2:51PM

Germany says it has canceled its surveillance agreement with the US and Britain following the revelations by the former contractor to National Security Agency (NSA) Edward Snowden about Washington’s mass spying program worldwide.

The agreement dated back to 1960s and allowed Washington and London to carry out spying operations in German territory to protect their troops there.

Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, in a statement, described the cancelation as “a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy.”

Just weeks ahead of the country’s national elections, the German government has been under pressure from the public and the opposition parties over its cooperation with White House’s controversial surveillance program which also targeted German citizens.

Meanwhile, a statement from the British Foreign Office said the German measure is not significant because the agreement has not been used since 1990.

"It's a loose end from a previous era which is right to tie up," said the statement.

A German official also told the AP that the move was symbolic. The official, who declined to be named, added that ending the agreement would not affect the intelligence cooperation between Berlin and its allies.

The revelations by Snowden sparked strong and angry reactions among Germans. Many civil rights activists drew a parallel between the NSA spying program and the activities of the secret police during the communist East Germany and the Nazi era.
0 Comments

December 19th, 2013

12/19/2013

0 Comments

 
I would like to look today at a dry but important issue....and timely......election law in Maryland. 

Below you see an article that tells you the entire election system is captured and dysfunctional.  I talked recently about how MD media black out of all media coverage in primaries of challengers against MD's incumbents for life which makes free and fair elections impossible.  MD League of Women Voters says MD media will not even link to their debates of ALL CANDIDATES and definitely will not air them.  That would open the election to many different platforms and balanced election coverage.

No, say the media.  Let's pretend that voter suppression at the polls....which very little evidence of this exists.....is the headline!


The problem is indeed incumbents for life and this involves the messy issue of political machines and captured media.  Everyone who reads my blog knows I went crazy last election to see that MUSE, a challenger to Ben Cardin get election coverage....exposing how arcane the election system is in Maryland.  I went to the Federal Election Commission and they said-----no law requiring media coverage of elections.  So, we have campaigning paid for by hundreds of millions of dollars buying campaign ads as the driver of free and fair elections.  This is the election financing debate but the problems are much deeper.  It involves a candidates ability to be included in all of the political discourse in the state or city and in Maryland the only way to do that is to be a member of the machine!  So, you have the neo-liberals vs conservative republicans and the crony is bipartisan.  Republican voters hate their choices as much as democratic voters.

I want to show you who in Maryland is allowing all of this crony and capture in elections exist.  Let's start with the Maryland Assembly election committee that makes election law, go to the Maryland State Board of Election to see who enforces election law,  and then look at the state of the  Federal Election Commission tasked with making all these laws work.

Please note that it is Obama, O'Malley, and Rawlings-Blake having control of these agencies and they are all neo-liberal.  This is not a republican problem!

Maryland Assembly House of Delegates


ELECTION LAW SUBCOMMITTEE

JON S. CARDIN  CHAIR OF ELECTION COMMITTEE

Democrat, District 11, Baltimore County

KATHRYN L. AFZALI
Republican, District 4A, Frederick County

KUMAR P. BARVE
Democrat, District 17, Montgomery County


TALMADGE BRANCH
Democrat, District 45, Baltimore City


RON GEORGE
Republican, District 30, Anne Arundel County

JOLENE IVEY
Democrat, District 47, Prince George's County

MICHAEL G. SUMMERS
Democrat, District 47, Prince George's County



What we need is election law that caps campaign contributions by the wealthy and corporations and we need law that requires media to provide as a public service time for all candidates in a campaign to have air time.  Back in the day you did not need a law for that because free and fair elections were a given!  But you say-----HOW CAN WE MAKE MEDIA LOSE MONEY BY PROVIDING FREE ELECTION COVERAGE?

The U.S. Department of State.
Government Authority Derives from the Will of the People Free and fair elections are a fundamental element of a healthy democracy.  To be truly free and fair, however, elections require not only transparent and well-managed election day polling, but also a society that encourages full citizen participation, political parties to operate freely, independent media to flourish, and which builds a judiciary system capable of exercising independent and impartial authority.


When I ask people why voter turnout is low in Maryland and almost absent in Baltimore I am told NO ONE IS RUNNING FOR WHICH I WOULD VOTE!  Political machines and incumbents have killed democracy in Maryland.  So, what is an election committee to do? Does having all kinds of voting opportunities matter if no one feels a challenger has a chance?  A common complaint in Baltimore and around the state----THE CANDIDATE DOES NOT EVEN LIVE IN MY DISTRICT....that's what happens with incumbents for life----they move and their political machine stays!



'Maryland's highest court has taken a liberal view of residency for elected officials. In 1998, it allowed State Sen. Clarence Blount to continue to represent Baltimore even though he lived in Pikesville while keeping a barebones apartment in the city. From a legal standpoint, home is where an elected official says it is, the court ruled'.

When I ask candidates what are the roadblocks?  THE ORGANIZATIONS PRESENTING DEBATES ARE ALLOWED TO EXCLUDE.


Does this look like full citizen participation? 


September 16, 2010
Primary turnout hits historic low
For all the talk of an energized electorate, and even with the new opportunity to vote early, turnout in Tuesday’s primaries was the lowest in for a gubernatorial election year in Maryland going back at least to 1982, the earliest year for which records were available.

Of Maryland’s 3,167,846 eligible voters, 761,413 cast ballots in the primaries, for a turnout of 24.04 percent, according to unofficial counts released Thursday by the State Board of Elections. The numbers do not yet include provisional or absentee ballots, but judging from previous elections, these are unlikely to be enough to push the total over the state’s previous low of 28.64 percent in in 1998.

This year, 2.44 percent of the electorate took advantage of early voting, offered for six days at central locations in each county; 21.6 percent voted on Tuesday, the traditional primary day, when local polling places were open.

In spite of a competitive Democratic primary for state's attorney, Baltimore saw a lower-than-average turnout of 21.49 percent. Baltimore County, venue for a comeptitive race for county executive, had a turnout of 29.45 percent.

Two of Maryland's least populous counties, meanwhile, distinguished themselves in electoral enthusiasm: Garrett County led the state with 39.59 percent turnout, including 35.09 percent on Tuesday. Talbot county led in early voting participation with 6.78 percent.

Statewide turnout in 2006, the last gubernatorial election, was 29.6 percent. That might have been driven in part by a competitive Democratic primary race between Benjamin L. Cardin and Kweisi Mfume for the open Senate seat vacated that year by retiring Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes.
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WHERE IS THE LAW IN MARYLAND THAT STATES PUBLIC AIR WAVES = PUBLIC INTEREST COVERAGE!

Michael Wolff: Give campaign ads free TV time
Michael Wolff, USA TODAY 2:48 p.m. EDT October 22, 2012


Why do campaigns continue to buy, almost to the exclusion of all other media, local broadcast television?


The solution is easy, and does not involve spending limits, free speech issues, or even banning Super PACs. Broadcast television is a regulated utility.
It is perfectly legal, reasonable and, at least from the public's view, uncontroversial to require broadcast television to provide free air time to qualified candidates.

The major effect, beyond saving money, of free and equitable broadcast media would be to neutralize swing voters. Since each side would have the same opportunity to convince them, the seesaw effect, and its attendant raising of the ante, goes away.

The cacophony would subside. A more creative use of media and more complex messaging would be needed to appeal to the most resistant voters. In marketing terms, each party and candidate would need to rely on longer-term branding solutions instead of quick-hit direct-sell commercials (more then 73,000 of them in Las Vegas alone this season, The New York Times reports). The meaning of the message would be more important than the number of messages. You would no longer be able to quickly buy message superiority — and no longer need to indulge Sheldon Adelson's motives to do it.

Brains, or at least cleverness, in American politics would be the higher-value currency.


____________________________________________
In Baltimore one does not hear a thing about candidates for election in the media.  Below you see that the one debate scheduled for a local election was with League of Women Voters and when it was cancelled....there was nothing.  Keep in mind that no media outlet would have shared this debate anyway.

September 12, 2011

Candidates protest lack of debate, media coverage Sun colleague Liz Kay reports:

Four primary challengers for president of the Baltimore City Council gathered outside City Hall Monday afternoon to protest the lack of media attention to their race.

Everyone in the media world understands that the only elections that matter in Maryland are in Montgomery County---the richest county manages to have an active democratic primary that is actually covered.  In Baltimore, we hear the Montgomery County primary coverage and nothing of our own.


Posted at 05:50 PM ET, 11/14/2011

Post Roast: Where was the coverage of Maryland’s municipal elections?

By Patrick B. Pexton

Seven cities within 22 miles of The Post’s newsroom on 15th Street NW held elections for mayor and council last Tuesday. Together, their population totals 268,000 people.

Not a word about any of these cities appeared in the Nov. 9 or Nov. 10 print editions of The Washington Post. And very little appeared online on election night or the next day. The cities are all in Maryland, four of them in the jurisdiction that complains almost constantly of being ignored by The Post: Prince George’s County.

___________________________________________

'elections require not only transparent and well-managed election day polling'

There is a great deal of concern about the policy of voting online as the fear of election fraud in Maryland would be high.  Here you see the minority party calling foul and claims of election return irregularities.  I had a small media outlet claim that votes for Cardin in Prince Georges County did not add up. 

If you look at all the rules and laws voted into place that look progressive, you see a great deal of discontent with the process!


U.S. Senate Candidate in MD Charges Electoral Failures, Misinformation by Board of Elections, Diebold

Kevin Zeese Issues Open Letter to Maryland Media via BRAD BLOG, Calls for Independent Review of Diebold in State Says MD Election Administrator Linda Lamone Failed to Report Electoral System Facts Accurately in Diebold's 'Showcase' State, Calls for New Voting Equipment in State in Light of Unreported Details, Contradicting Information and Stunning Letter from Republican Governor...


By Kevin Zeese on 2/18/2006, 3:27pm PT   Guest Blogged by Kevin Zeese

EDITOR'S NOTE: Kevin Zeese is an independent candidate running for the U.S. Senate in Maryland. His following "Open Letter to the Maryland Media" comes on the heels of Thursday's news of Republican MD Governor Robert Ehrlich's letter announcing, amongst other things, that he "no longer [has] confidence in the State Board of Elections' ability to conduct fair and accurate elections in 2006." In the letter, Ehrlich expressly singles out Democratic Election Administrator Linda Lamone, charging that she and the SBE have been "working primarily on behalf of partisan legislators and their interests" and questions her claims that Diebold's paperless touch-screen voting machines --- deployed across the state in 2002 as part of Diebold's "showcase" roll-out of their new system --- could not be replaced by voting devices with voter-verified paper trails in time for the 2006 election. Ehrlich called for paper ballots in his letter.

It was also revealed on Thursday, that Lamone had allowed uncertified Diebold voting machines to be used in elections in Maryland in both 2002 and 2004. Diebold's election equipment has since been show to be hackable, prone to massive failure, and has lost votes in recent elections according to a recently released non-partisan GAO Report, a recent "hack test" in Leon County, FL, and scores of other confirmed reports, studies and analysis from around the country. Lamone is also the curent President of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED).

Given the national implications of this matter and the media's general lack of coverage of these important matters, we're happy to honor Zeese's request to run the letter in full here at BRAD BLOG.

___________________________________________

'political parties to operate freely'


Maryland is killing participatory democracyJune 01, 2011

As The Sun's recent editorial noted, the right to petition almost no longer exists in Maryland ("Technicalities kill another petition," May 23). The Frederick petition is only the latest in a very long line of petition drives that have failed to qualify for the ballot in recent years.

And this problem affects small political parties as well as ballot questions — currently, all three of Maryland's small parties have lost their status as recognized political parties and are no longer able to nominate candidates for public office. In particular, the Green Party, which has been getting more and more votes in every Baltimore City election, will be unable to nominate candidates for this year's election unless its ballot access is restored by July 1.

But fortunately, political parties are more permanent organizations than referendum and initiative groups, and we have decades of experience with ballot access law. So Maryland's Libertarian and Green Parties have joined together as co-plaintiffs in a lawsuit attempting to reestablish the fundamental right to petition that Maryland voters once enjoyed. The rule in Maryland has always been that whatever our policy differences, we're all in the same boat on ballot access.

Each party submitted about 15,000 petition signatures to regain its political party status to the Maryland State Board of Elections, but election officials will not recertify either party — even though they admit that more than the required 10,000 registered voters have signed each of our petitions. We argue that they are seriously misinterpreting the case law and applying a signature verification standard that is much more strict than is legally justified.

Do we really want only the Democratic and Republican parties to be able to run candidates for public office? No minor party or independent candidates, no initiatives or referenda — and no participatory democracy? We think not.

Doug McNeil, Baltimore

Tim Willard, Gaithersburg

The writers are the plaintiff's representatives for the Maryland Libertarian Party and Green Party, respectively.


_______________________________________________
Baltimore has a democratic party farm team ready to join enter the elective process and do what Baltimore Development tells them to.  OH, YOU THOUGHT MARYLAND POLS WORK FOR THE PUBLIC??!!!

If you are part of this crony system it is assumed you will do just that and your campaign will get noticed. 


FROM WATCHDOG WIRE - MARYLAND Crony Capitalism and Maryland’s Political Machine

The machine will brook no opposition

August 16, 2013 by Mark Newgent

Crony capitalism is the grease that oils Maryland’s political machine. And, at last Monday’s Baltimore City Council meeting, we saw a brazen example of how the machine uses political thuggery in pursuit of crony capitalism.

According to the Baltimore Brew:

Following Monday’s City Council meeting where Carl Stokes stood out as the only councilman vocally opposed to a $107 million TIF financing subsidy for Harbor Point, the developer’s public relations consultant marched up to the councilman with a blunt message.

“You’re done,” Steve Kearney told Stokes, according to two witnesses. “I’ll make sure you’re through in politics in Baltimore.”

According to the witnesses, Stokes replied, “You don’t determine that.” Kearney then told Stokes he better hope that his “dinosaurs” come through with political support in the next election because “I’m going after you….”

Harbor Point developer, Michael Beatty, hired Kearney’s firm KO Public Affairs, and according to the Brew article, Kearney has been active in pushing the City Council to approve the $107 million subsidy.

Kearney was Governor Martin O’Malley’s communications director, and also served in that capacity when O’Malley was mayor of Baltimore.  Kearney’s partner Damian O’Doherty was a top advisor to former Baltimore County Executive, and now Secretary of Transportation, Jim Smith.  O’Doherty’s brother, Ryan was top aide to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, until he resigned late last month.  Kearney and O’Doherty organized high dollar fund raising events for O’Malley’s 2010 reelection campaign.

That Kearney would threaten Stokes shows how much the city (and state’s) ruling political machine will brook no opposition.  KO Public Affairs is key cog in the wheels of the machine.

KO Public affairs was instrumental in the approval of Maryland’s speed camera program, created an astroturf organization to pressure the General Assembly to adopt O’Malley’s gas tax, acted as unregistered lobbyists for MGM Resorts during the 2012 special session to expand gambling, and acted as consultants for the developers for the State Center project, which was a judge ultimately found to have violated state procurement law.

Kearney and O’Doherty’s business model is based influencing their friends in government to take money from taxpayers to give to their clients.

The total amount of taxpayer subsidies proposed for Harbor Point is $400 million, and Kearney and the machine will brook no opposition.

Kearney and O’Doherty even have their own media outlet, Center Maryland, which, bills itself as “the news you need straight down the middle.”  However, Center Maryland features pro-O’Malley propaganda, and content that advocates for the agenda of their clients.

Welcome to the Banana Republic of Maryland.


________________________________________________

Please attend these State Board Meetings and shout loudly to enact election law that will give free air time for campaigns in all media, that have the state and city sponsor many forums and debates of all candidates, to keep political parties on the ballots each year so candidates can effectively choose how to market their candidacy, and take seriously efforts to intimidate and control the elective futures of candidates.

State Board Meeting
January 23, 2014 at 2:00pm
State Board of Elections



Street Address (Directions and Maps) 151 West Street,
Suite 200
Annapolis, MD 21401


What is the State Board of Elections?

The State Administrative Board of Election Laws was created in 1969 to ensure compliance with the requirements of Maryland and federal election laws by all persons involved in the election process. Thirty years later, under its new name of State Board of Elections (SBE) it continues its mission in collaboration with the County Boards of Election.

Board Members The State Board of Elections is made up of five members who serve four-year terms and represent both principal political parties — three of the majority and two of the minority party. The members are appointed by the Governor, with the advice and consent of the Senate of Maryland.

The current board members are:

  • Bobbie S. Mack (D), Chairman
  • David J. McManus, Jr. (R), Vice Chairman
  • Rachel T. McGuckian (D)
  • Patrick H. Murray (D)
  • Charles E. Thomann (R)
Bylaws of the State Board

These bylaws, adopted by the members of the Maryland State Board of Elections, provide the rules of governance for the board during the conduct of all duties assigned under State and federal laws and regulations. Further, these bylaws set a standard of personal conduct for members of the board requiring them to conduct themselves in accordance with high ethical standards in order to ensure the public that members are independent of partisan pressures and conflicting interests.



____________________________________________
IF YOU THINK THE FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION HAS YOUR ELECTORAL BACK......FORGET ABOUT IT.  IT CANNOT PROVIDE OVERSIGHT OUTSIDE THEIR OFFICE DOORS!



The Center for Public Integrity

Just after the federal government shut down Oct. 1, and one of the government’s more dysfunctional agencies stopped functioning altogether, Chinese hackers picked their moment to attack.

They waylaid the Federal Election Commission’s networks. They crashed computer systems that publicly disclose how billions of dollars are raised and spent each election cycle by candidates, parties and political action committees. 



Carl Hiaasen: Florida governor's continuing crusade to shrink the vote

  • By Carl Hiaasen 6:00 a.m. EST, December 19, 2013  Baltimore Sun



Gov. Rick Scott's latest purge of Florida's voter rolls is lurching forward, despite the skepticism and outright opposition of many county elections supervisors.

True to his "tea party" roots, Mr. Scott dreams of the days when most voters were cranky, middle-aged white people, his core constituency. Up for re-election next year, the governor fears a high voter turnout, because that would mean lots of Hispanics and African-Americans standing in line to cast their ballots.

They tend to vote Democrat, grim prospects for a Republican who isn't exactly beloved in his own party.

Mr. Scott's first voter purge was a debacle. Initiated ahead of the 2012 elections, the idea was to thwart President Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates by reducing the number of Hispanic, Haitian and other foreign-born voters.

Screening drivers' licenses, the Division of Elections produced a list of about 182,000 possible non-citizens who were registered to vote. Unfortunately, the list proved worthless because the data was outdated or flat-out wrong.

County officials were left exasperated and angry.

Mr. Scott's vote-whitening hit squad then reduced the list of targets to 2,600, and finally to a measly 198 before bagging the whole project.

To the dismay of Scott and Republican leaders, Mr. Obama carried Florida. This information wasn't available on Election Day, or for several days afterwards, because Florida was the last state in the country to count all its votes.

Thank God it no longer mattered.

More than 8.4 million Floridians went to the polls, and long lines overwhelmed some election offices late into the night. These delays could have been avoided if Mr. Scott and the GOP-controlled Legislature had agreed in advance to increase the number of early-voting sites, as many county supervisors had requested.

But Republicans don't like early voting because it raises the total turnout. They prefer a smaller, more manageable electorate.

The new Florida purge will use a data program from U.S. Department of Homeland Security called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. Election officials are supposed to compare voter rolls to a list of legal non-citizens who are qualified to receive certain benefits.

A federal court ruled that Florida was allowed to use the SAVE list, even though Homeland Security officials raised doubts about its reliability as a means of identifying non-citizens.

The point man for the Voter Purge II is once again Secretary of State Ken Detzner, a Mr. Scott appointee, who calls it "Project Integrity." Seriously.

Mr. Detzner recently finished a short statewide tour of county elections offices, where he tried to stir up enthusiasm for the purge. There was none.

The most intense grilling came from Susan Bucher, supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County, the site of repeated ballot fiascos going back to Bush-Gore in 2000. A Democrat serving in a nonpartisan position, Ms. Bucher questioned Mr. Detzner and his staff about the accuracy of the SAVE list.

"Where does that data come from; how often is it updated -- every 10 years or every 10 minutes?" she asked, adding: "I have a lot of concern that the people we got the database from are saying this is not comprehensive and definitive."

Picky, picky, picky.

Mr. Detzner replied that SAVE was the best database available, and the voter screening "will be done correctly."

He said he didn't know how often the information was updated to show changes in immigration status. When asked how soon counties would be supplied with lists of potential non-citizens on the rolls, he said he didn't know.
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    Cindy Walsh is a lifelong political activist and academic living in Baltimore, Maryland.

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