Category:

September 24th, 2013

9/24/2013

Baltimore and Maryland teacher's unions should be front and center in organizing town halls on all these education policies. Common Core and Race to the Top need to be included in these teacher's union public forums!

Do any Maryland residents know that this important process is happening regarding education? Who will be the one's that comment?

CODE OF MARYLAND REGULATIONS
TITLE 13A
STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION
OPPORTUNITY FOR PUBLIC COMMENT

In accordance with State Government Article, §§10-130—10-139, Annotated Code of Maryland, the Maryland State Department of Education is currently reviewing and evaluating the follow chapters of COMAR Title 13A:

Subtitle 01 STATE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION 13A.01.01 State Board of Education 13A.01.02 State Superintendent of Schools 13A.01.03 State Department of Education 13A.01.04 Public School Standards 13A.01.05 Appeals to the State Board of Education
Subtitle 02 LOCAL SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION 13A.02.01 Local Boards of Education 13A.02.03 Local Administrative and Supervisory Staff 13A.02.04 Tobacco-Free School Environment 13A.02.05 Maintenance of Effort 13A.02.06 General Financial Aid to Local School Systems 13A.02.07 Annual Audits of Financial Statements and Federal Awards 13A.02.08 Recognition of Employee Organizations 13A.02.09 Closing of Schools
Subtitle 03 GENERAL INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAMS 13A.03.01 Standards for Kindergarten Programs 13A.03.02 Graduation Requirements for Public High Schools in Maryland 13A.03.04 Test Administration and Data-Reporting Policies and Procedures 13A.03.05 Administration of Home and Hospital Teaching for Students
Subtitle 04 SPECIFIC SUBJECTS 13A.04.01 Programs in Technology Education 13A.04.02 Secondary School Career and Technology Education 13A.04.03 Driver Education Programs 13A.04.04 Religious Education 13A.04.05 Education That is Multicultural 13A.04.08 Program in Social Studies 13A.04.09 Program in Science 13A.04.10 Program of Instruction in the World of Work Competencies 13A.04.12 Program in Mathematics 13A.04.13 Program in Physical Education 13A.04.14 Program in English Language Arts 13A.04.16 Programs in Fine Arts
13A.04.19
Program in Cosmetology 13A.04.20 Program for Barbers
Subtitle 05 SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAMS 13A.05.01 Provision of a Free Appropriate Public Education 13A.05.02 Administration of Services for Students with Disabilities 13A.05.03 Programs of Adult Education 13A.05.04 Programs for Library Media Services 13A.05.05 Programs of Pupil Services 13A.05.06 Programs for Migrant Education 13A.05.07 Programs for Non-English and Limited-English Proficient Students 13A.05.08 Approved Paid Work-Based Learning Programs 13A.05.09 Programs for Homeless Children 13A.05.10 Automated External Defibrillator Program in High Schools
Subtitle 06 SUPPORTING PROGRAMS 13A.06.01 Programs for Food and Nutrition 13A.06.02 Prekindergarten Programs 13A.06.05 School Supplies and Equipment 13A.06.06 Safety Equipment 13A.06.07 Student Transportation
Pursuant to the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) Work Plan submitted to and approved by the Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive, and Legislative Review, MSDE will evaluate the need to retain, amend, or repeal any provisions of these regulations based on whether they:
• Continue to be necessary for the public interest?
• Continue to be supported by statutory authority and judicial opinion?
• Are obsolete or other appropriate for amendment or repeal?
• Are effective in accomplishing their intended purpose?

The Maryland State Department of Education would like to provide interested parties with an opportunity to participate in the review and evaluation process by submitting comments on these regulations. The comments may address any concerns about the regulations. If the comments include suggested changes to the regulations, please be as specific as possible and provide language for the suggested changes.

Comments should be directed to Anthony L. South, Executive Director, Office of the State Board of Education, 200 West Baltimore Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201-2595, by fax to 410-333-6033, or by e-mail to StateBoard@msde.state.md.us. Comments must be received by January 31, 2014.

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The only way this made national news was that a private individual at the meeting used her own video camera to film this incident and then released it to national press. All of the local media present would have and some still are silent and would never have released this much information.

WE MUST DEMAND FREE MEDIA AND OPEN PUBLIC FORUMS IN ORDER TO RETURN TO A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY!

Robert Small, Maryland Parent, Arrested At School Meeting After Questioning Common Core (VIDEO)

The Huffington Post | By Hunter Stuart Posted: 09/23/2013 2:39 pm EDT | Updated: 09/23/2013 3:09 pm EDT

A Maryland parent was thrown out of a school meeting and arrested after questioning a new state-led education standards initiative. He has been charged with assaulting a police officer and disrupting a school function and could go to jail for 10 years if convicted. Amateur video of the incident has gone viral online over the past few days.

"I want to know how many parents here are aware that the goal of Common Core standards isn't to prepare our children for full-fledged universities, it's to prepare them for community college," 46-year-old parent Robert Small shouted Thursday night during a school meeting between parents, teachers and administrators that was held by the Maryland State Department of Education in Towson, a suburb of Baltimore.

His interjection was greeted with applause.

Small, who has two kids in the area's public schools, went on to briefly explain his opposition to the Common Core, an education initiative incentivized by the federal government and designed to "establish a single set of clear educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade [students]," according to the initiative's official website.

An off-duty Baltimore police officer moonlighting as a security guard arrived to escort Small from the meeting. When Small didn't immediately follow the officer, the officer yanked him forcefully toward the aisle, prompting gasps from the audience.

"Parents, take control," Small says as he is led out of the room. As the officer pulls out handcuffs, Small can be heard saying, "I'm not an activist, I'm a parent. I have a right to speak."

The meeting, which was held in order to explain the Common Core to parents, according to The Baltimore Sun, was conducted in a format where school administrators selected pre-submitted questions from parents.

Small is charged with two misdemeanors: assaulting an officer and disrupting a school function, Baltimore County Police told The Huffington Post over the phone Monday.

Although Small does not appear to be touching the officer in the video, the police report says he "continued to yell and pushed the officer" once the pair was out of view of the camera, Baltimore police spokesperson Elise Armacost told HuffPost. "That is the basis for the assault charge."

Small faces up to 10 years in jail for the assault charge alone.

When contacted by The Huffington Post, the Maryland State Department of Education declined to comment, saying the incident fell under the local police department's jurisdiction. The Baltimore County Department of Education did not respond to our request for comment.
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Cortly Witherspoon and Sharon Black arrested at City Hall Activists sought meeting with Rawlings-Blake about police brutality
Brew Editors August 6, 2012 at 10:49 pm

Rev. Cortly “C.D.” Witherspoon, outside Central Booking, after arrest at Baltimore City Hall.

Baltimore police arrested two longtime political activists today and charged them with trespassing after they tried unsuccessfully to deliver a letter – about the closing of recreation centers and fire stations and alleged police abuses – to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

Rev. Cortly “C.D.” Witherspoon, president of the local chapter of the Southern Leadership Conference, and Sharon Black, an organizer with the Baltimore All Peoples Congress, had been leading an afternoon rally of about 75 people outside City Hall.

According to Baltimore photographer and videographer William Hughes, the two were arrested after they refused to leave City Hall:

“I was there for the whole rally, which began at 3 PM at the Shot Tower. Then, they marched to City Hall, past Police H/Q. I saw Sharon and CD, inside the City Hall. They were trying to get permission to go up the Mayor’s Office. They were allowed up to the office and met with a rep. I was back outside by then.”

Activist Sharon Black being escorted to Central Booking today after being arrested at City Hall for trespassing. (Photo by William Hughes)

The mayor declined to meet with them and they insisted, according to their phone messages to the crowd outside, on a personal meeting. When they refused to leave, they were arrested.

Organizers have been talking in recent weeks about the letter they planned to send to Rawlings-Blake demanding “an emergency meeting” to talk about police-involved shootings in Baltimore, among other issues.

Among the cases of alleged misconduct they cited today was that of David Yim, a disabled man shot by police in April, and Thomas Threatt, whose beating during an east Baltimore jobs protest was captured on video.
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Maryland totally ignores Public meeting laws and as we see above want to eliminate even public comment at public forums.

Look at the law that gives a few hundred dollars in fine and public shaming. These neo-liberals laugh at being outed at City Hall for illegal behavior so this is nothing. Do you know that in Baltimore if you are late in paying 3 parking tickets the police will tow your car and fees will add up to hundreds of dollars? Fines of over a thousand for standing up to shout out at a public meeting?

THIS IS BREAKING THE LAW......

Bill would toughen Maryland Open Meetings law enforcementMeasure would require fines, public shaming for improper meetings

April 13, 2013|By Erin Cox, The Baltimore Sun

New laws passed by the Maryland General Assembly late last week would put stricter penalties and an element of public shaming behind the state's open-meetings laws.

State lawmakers said public officials have been able to flout the rules without significant consequences.

"It has no enforcement whatsoever," said Del. Dan Morhaim, a Baltimore County Democrat who sponsored the bill to toughen open-meetings laws. "This is the first bill that actually creates some enforcement."

Maryland's public officials are barred from conducting public business behind closed doors, but the penalties for doing so in the past have been a rarely levied fine and a written notice that Morhaim said was often ignored.

The bill came out of a series of hearings this summer, during which a committee of state lawmakers found that sometimes officials take a written advisory about violations from the Open Meetings Compliance Board and "just throw it away."

Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for Gov. Martin O'Malley, said he is reviewing the bill.

The measure would increase fines for breaking the open-meetings law from $100 to $250. It would also require a public body to announce at its next meeting that the compliance board found it had broken the law. Each member of the group that violated the law would have to sign a statement acknowledging the misconduct.

Morhaim said he drafted the legislation before two Maryland institutions were separately accused last year of holding illegal meetings.

In one incident, the University System of Maryland's board signed off on the University of Maryland, College Park's move to the Big Ten Conference. In another, the Morgan State University Board of Regents voted to terminate the school president's contract — a decision it later reversed.

A Morgan spokesman has said school officials do not believe the vote violated the law. University System of Maryland officials acknowledged the breach but said that the group was "confused" and "overlooked" the law.

Those cases "drew a lot of attention to the fact that there are no teeth to our open-meetings laws," said Common Cause Maryland's executive director, Jennifer Bevan-Dangel.

Another bill passed by the legislature would require public officials to be trained on how to follow the open-meetings law.

That measure, introduced by Republican Del. Anthony O'Donnell, was praised by Common Cause and other watchdog groups.

"If citizens can't see the decisions that are made, they can't hold their elected officials accountable," Bevan-Dangel said. "And then voters can't make educated decisions at the polls if they don't know what their elected officials are doing."

0 Comments

December 17th, 2012

12/17/2012

0 Comments

PLEASE CHECK ACTIONS LISTED ON DECEMBER 16!

I HAVE HEARD TIME AND AGAIN FROM MY ELECTED INCUMBENTS.....'I DON'T WORK FOR YOU, I WORK FOR CORPORATIONS'. AND THEY DO FOLKS! YOU AND I DO NOT HEAR OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LAWS BEING WRITTEN THAT ARE UNDERMINING OUR SOCIETY!!!
THINK ALEC WRITING EDUCATION REFORM OR GUN LAWS IS BAD......ALL OF THAT IS CHILD'S PLAY.

In this midst of receiving emails from political action organizations that solicit our email addresses for signing issue petitions we are being told that our democratic incumbents are fighting for our entitlements. I was told that Cardin and Mikulski are standing firm against cuts. We all know that all of the policy which they have been a part has done nothing but weaken our social safety nets so this is propaganda. IF THOSE POLITICAL ACTION GROUPS ARE TELLING YOU YOUR INCUMBENT IS WORKING FOR YOU......THEY ARE THIRD WAY CORPORATE POLITICAL GROUPS WORKING FOR CORPORATE INTEREST. Signing petitions is a good thing......do not take these organizations as supporting the people just because they advance these petitions!

Below you'll see what is the most nefarious and deeply destructive legislation ever pulled together in America's history. It basically subjugates the US government to multinational corporations and places US citizens in the position of having a government that cannot and will not work in the interest of its citizens.......THIS IS WHAT IS MEANT WHEN THE ELITE SCHOOLS SAY THAT POLITICS IN AMERICA IS DEAD. You will see that these international laws surrounding trade between countries state that a nation's government will be sued if a law is changed that hurts the business interests of these multinational corporations. So, if we wanted to protect the US environment with a law and that law places burden on the profitability of a multinational corporation, that corporation will sue the US government and take it to court for breech of contract. Taxpayers would be paying for the US government's fight to be able to pass a law.

THIS LEGISLATION IS DELIBERATELY WRITTEN IN A WAY THAT WILL MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDO BECAUSE THEY ARE GETTING MANY NATIONS TO SIGN ON TO THIS AND IT IS BEING WORKED INTO ALL OF INTERNATIONAL TREATIES.

I was at a progressive meeting last year in Washington DC where one of the attendees stood up and said she received a leaked piece of what was being discussed and that it wasn't good. The important point is that these negotiations are so closed that even the most ardent political hacktivists are not finding out what is being discussed. This is because.......NONE OF US WILL LIKE IT. IF YOU THINK YOU ARE CLOSED OUT OF YOUR CITY DEVELOPMENT MEETINGS OR IF OPEN MEETINGS ARE A SHAM AT THE MARYLAND STATE LEVEL.......YOU SHOULD SEE WHAT YOUR NATIONAL INCUMBENTS ARE DOING TO YOU AND ME.

This is what Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski are doing for you and me.....this is what Sarbanes, Hoyer, and Cummings are doing for you and me.......THIS IS WHAT YOUR THIRD WAY CORPORATE DEMOCRATIC INCUMBENT......THE BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON CAUCUS ARE DOING TO YOU AND ME!!!!!

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!!

This is why the last election of incumbent senators and reps were so important to Third Way.....to the extent that a media blackout in the Baltimore area during elections to make sure Ben Cardin.....the most threatened, was reelected. These incumbents who have been in office these few decades since the Clinton Administration have been working towards this goal. It is also why we are seeing these Non-governmental organizations NGOs......the private non-profit industrial complex becoming public......this is what they think will be the corporate center that replaces domestic politics.

HERE IN MARYLAND ........ JOHNS HOPKINS LEADS THIS EFFORT. IT CAN BE SEEN IN THE GIFTING PROGRAMS LIKE ABAG (ASSOCIATION OF BALTIMORE AREA GRANTMAKERS) AND MARYLAND NON-PROFITS

These people have decided to push policy that will end not only democracy in America.....but completely eliminate our governmental structures. Remember, we barely have Rule of Law anymore so the entire Justice Department focuses almost exclusively on corporate law. We barely have a judicial system as 90% of court cases are plea bargains and arbitration. Judges and lawyers are disappearing. YOUR INCUMBENT IS DOING THIS!!!!

AS YOUR INCUMBENT SHOUTS THAT THEY ARE PROTECTING YOUR ENTITLEMENTS THEY ARE LEGISLATING SO THAT YOU AND I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD EVEN BASIC HEALTH CARE. PLEASE TAKE TIME TO READ THIS ARTICLE BELOW AND GO TO THE ATTACHED SITES TO SEE THAT THIS IS WHAT YOUR INCUMBENT HAS BEEN WORKING THESE FOUR YEARS AS THE ECONOMY STAGNATES.

Leaked Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement Texts Reveal U.S. Pushing Extreme Pharmaceutical Corporation Demands that Would Undermine Consumers’ Access to Affordable Medicine Obama Administration Positions Roll Back Initial 2007 Reforms Made by Bush Administration on Medicines Patents, Abandon Access to Medicines Commitments

Leaks of U.S. proposals for the Trans-Pacific Free Trade Agreement (FTA) reveal that the Obama administration has reversed reforms designed to enhance access to affordable medicines made during the George W. Bush administration and is instead demanding new rights for pharmaceutical firms to challenge pricing and other drug formulary policies used by many developed countries to keep down prices. The leaked draft text raises multiple concerns, including the following:

EMPOWERING BIG PHARMA TO ATTACK COST-SAVING DRUG FORMULARIES
This is a new proposal to empower pharmaceutical firms to attack the medicine formulary systems that New Zealand, Australia and other developed countries have used so successfully to reduce sky-high drug prices. Governments use formularies to control health costs by listing medicines approved for government purchase or reimbursement and negotiating with drug firms to obtain the lowest prices. Using the Trans-Pacific FTA to undermine Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and New Zealand’s Pharmaceutical Management Agency (PHARMAC) is a goal U.S. pharmaceutical firms. U.S. states and some U.S. national programs also use formulary systems.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) The Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement: NAFTA for the Pacific Rim? Read CTC’s Most Current Fact Sheets

The Trans-Pacific Partnership
What Corporations Want in Trans-Pacific Trade Negotiations
The TPP’s Threats to Public Health
The TPP and the Environment

Citizens Trade Campaign P.O. Box 77077
Washington DC 20013
Email : info(at)citizenstrade.org
Phone: 202/494-8826

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a massive new international trade pact being pushed by the U.S. government at the behest of transnational corporations. The TPP is already being negotiated between the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam — but it is also specifically intended as a “docking agreement” that other Pacific Rim countries would join over time, with Japan, Korea, China and others already expressing some interest. It is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in the world.

The Obama administration’s recent embrace of the Bush-negotiated Korea, Panama and Colombia Free Trade Agreements leaves many worried that the Trans-Pacific Partnship will become nothing but a massive new NAFTA-style agreement. Indeed, while not all the negotiating text for the FTA has yet been released, it is already clear that trade negotiators are using past free trade agreements as their basic starting point for this one. The leaked of several chapters, in fact, show rollbacks from the Bush years on topics like access to medicine and zero progress on investment.

The ongoing, multi-year negotiations over the TPP are supposed to conclude in 2012, and as such, the window of opportunity for preventing the FTA from becoming a new “NAFTA for the Pacific Rim” is rapidly closing. Here are some of the questions yet to be answered:

Labor rights: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA include labor standards based on International Labor Organization conventions, and if included, how will they be enforced?
Investment Provisions: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA include so-called “investor-state” provisions that allow individual corporations to challenge environmental, consumer and other public interest policies as barriers to trade?
Public Procurement: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA respect nations’ and communities’ right to set purchasing preferences that keep taxpayer dollars re-circulating in local economies?
Access to Medicines: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA allow governments to produce and/or obtain affordable, generic medications for sick people?
Agriculture: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA allow countries to ensure that farmers and farm workers are fairly compensated, while also preventing the agricultural dumping that has forced so many family farmers off their land?

If labor, environmental, family farm, consumer, faith, immigrant rights, human rights and other social justice advocates don’t force Trans-Pacific FTA negotiations into the public light, the answers to these questions aren’t likely to be ones we’ll be happy with.

International trade policies can be designed to lift labor, environmental and human rights standards and living conditions at home and abroad — but only if we demand it.

Trans-Pacific Trade Negotiations: We Need a Fair Deal or No Deal

Urge negotiators to release the texts of the Trans-Pacific FTA negotiations using this online petition or by helping to circulate this petition on paper

See photos from actions outside the Dallas round in May 2012
See photos from actions outside the Chicago round in September 2011
See photos from actions outside the southern California mini-round in January 2012
See photos from actions outside the San Francisco round in June 2010

Links
See the leaked investment text and analysis from June 2012
See the leaked IP, drug formularies and regulatory coherence texts and analysis from October 2011
See the October 2011 civil society letter urging transparency in the negotiations
See our September 2011 Background Memo on the Trans-Pacific FTA
See our 2010 CTC Letter to President Obama on the Trans-Pacific FTA
In 2009, 350+ groups sent a letter to USTR on the Trans-Pacific FTA
Make or Break: Obama Officials Start TPP Talks Today Global Trade Watch, March 15, 2010
Trans-Pacific Partnership Opportunity to Fix Broken System Teamsters, January 26th, 2010
See the USTR TPP Statements and Actions to Date

News & Opinion
Host U.S. under pressure in Asia-Pacific Trade Talks Reuters, June 13, 2010
US environment groups urge inclusion of Lacey Act language in TPP Inside US Trade, June 4, 2010
US Tries to Build Consensus for Trans-Pacific Trade Talks Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2010
Aiming for a trade agreement that breaks with the past Human Rights for Workers, May 13, 2010
Global Union Leaders: Open Trans-Pacific Trade Talks AFL-CIO NOW Blog, May 12, 2010
Must be told Wellsboro Gazette, May 12, 2010
Trading away financial stability Guardian, May 4, 2010
Malaysia could join Asia-Pacific trade talks – US Reuters, May 6, 2010
Kagen says trade deal could make or break U.S. dairy industry Wisconsin Ag Connection, April 29, 2010

TPP as backdoor to Colombia FTA? Eyes on Trade, March 23, 2010
Trade unions in TPP countries call for a fairer trade framework friendly to working people CTU Media Release, March 15, 2010
Proposed Pacific trade agreement must deliver for workers, jobs and the environment, say unions Australian Council of Trade Unions, March 15, 2010
Don’t trade away health, labour, cultural and environmental policies AFTINET, March 14, 2010
Thirty US Senators warn US Trade Representative Ron Kirk about Dairy Provisions in TPP March 11, 2010
House Trade Working Group Requests Meeting with USTR on Trans-Pacific Partnership FTA Office of Congressman Mike Michaud, January 21, 2010
Levin Argues Against Fast-Track Trade Authority CQ Politics, December 15, 2009
Trans-Pacific Partnership Announcement Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, December 14, 2009
Obama Tells Congress U.S. Will Pursue Asia Trade Bloomberg, December 14, 2009

Kirk says U.S. will work with Congress on Pacific trade pact Bloomberg, November 14, 2009
For trade, Obama doesn’t look South Miami Herald, October 19, 2009
U.S. Wants Japan, Malaysia, South Korea to Join Talks Bloomberg, December 18, 2009
Obama boosts hopes for free trade in Asia-Pacific Associated Press, November 17, 2009

Background
In March of 2009, our national, state and local affiliates, representing well over sixteen million combined members, and 350 individual organizations in the trade reform movement, agreed that many of the most serious problems of the previous trade agreement model were replicated in past FTAs, and that the initial reforms made to labor and environmental standards and medicines patent rules required further improvements.

For a prospective TPP to be successful, it cannot merely mirror past U.S. agreements, including those negotiated with Peru, Colombia, Panama and Korea. The FTAs negotiated under the previous Administration do not represent an acceptable trade agreement model. Indeed, a majority of House Democrats voted against the Peru FTA. However, specific improvements made to some of those pacts’ terms in 2007 with respect to labor and environmental standards and patent rules related to medicines are a starting point from which a prospective TPP agreement must achieve more progress.

If the TPP if it is to represent a more balanced way to expand trade, and garner broad support from the public, labor and civil society organizations and thus Congress, it must address the core issues below which are also central to the TRADE Act.

- Labor and Environmental Standards. The Peru FTA and the three leftover Bush FTAs require countries only to implement the vague terms set forth in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and they explicitly do not refer to the ILO Conventions, with their associated jurisprudence and protections. The labor standards of a prospective TPP agreement must require signatories to enforce the core International Labor Organisation’s (ILO) standards as set forth in the ILO Conventions. Requiring in the TPP that countries implement in their domestic law the ILO Convention standards will be a historic accomplishment for international worker rights. Indeed, all future U.S. trade agreements must include a requirement that countries implement in their domestic law the ILO Convention standards.

- Enforcement. They must also include provisions stating that the failure to enforce or the weakening of such policies would constitute a violation of a trade pact provision, for which the consequences will be just as stringent as commercial violations. The record of implementation of the Peru FTA demonstrates why better enforcement of trade pact labor and environmental terms must be a goal of a prospective TPP. Despite inclusion of the 2007-revised labor and environmental language, the Peru FTA was implemented in 2009 without Peru fully implementing its labor commitments as required and after its government rolled back existing environmental protections. Given the disconcerting labor rights records of Vietnam and Brunei, the issue of enforcement will be a critical one in the TPP negotiations.

- Foreign-Investor Rights and Private Extra-judicial Investor-State Enforcement. The TPP must not include the same foreign investor terms included in NAFTA, CAFTA and the Bush FTAs that led many Democrats to oppose these pacts. These past rules afford foreign investors operating here with greater rights than those enjoyed by U.S. investors. The past FTA investment provisions also allow foreign investors and corporations to directly enforce their special FTA investor rights and privileges by suing governments in foreign tribunals to demand cash compensation. President Obama cited these investment rules as problematic during the campaign. The past FTAs’ investor rights terms create incentives for U.S. firms to offshore their U.S. production to foreign jurisdictions where they can operate under privileged FTA foreign investor status rather than be forced to deal with that country’s regulatory policy and courts. They also subject our domestic environmental, zoning, health and other public interest policies to challenge by foreign investors in foreign tribunals.

- Food and Product Safety. NAFTA, CAFTA and past FTAs contain language requiring the United States to accept imported food that does not meet our domestic safety standards and limiting import inspection of food and products. In all future U.S. trade pacts, the right to send food and products into the United States must be conditioned on meeting U.S. safety and inspection standards.

- Procurement Provisions. Past FTA procurement rules subject many common federal and state procurement policies to challenge and directly forbid other common procurement policies. These procurement rules continue the NAFTA/CAFTA ban on anti-offshoring and many Buy America policies, and expose U.S. renewable-energy, recycled-content and other environmental safety requirements to challenge. These terms must be changed in the TPP to provide the policy space for exciting “Green Economy” proposals needed to get our economy back on track.

- Service-sector deregulation. Future U.S. trade pacts must not limit domestic policy regarding the regulation of health, energy, and other essential services. As well, the financial crisis has shown the perils of locking in deregulation of banking, insurance, and other financial services, as has occurred in past pacts.

- Agriculture Provisions. Past FTAs contain the NAFTA-style agriculture trade rules that have simultaneously undermined U.S. producers’ ability to earn a fair price for their crops at home and in the global marketplace. Multinational grain-trading and food-processing firms have made enormous profits, while farmers on both ends have been hurt. If this model is continued, hunger is projected to increase, along with illicit drug cultivation, and undocumented migration. Failure to establish new agriculture terms would intensify the race to the bottom in commodity prices, pitting farmer against farmer and nation against nation to see who can produce food the cheapest, regardless of labor, environment or food-safety standards.

- Access to Medicines. While the most egregious, CAFTA-based terms limiting access to affordable medicines were removed from the last four Bush FTAs, the texts still include NAFTA-style terms that undermine the right to affordable medicines that were contained in the WTO’s Doha Declaration. The TPP negotiations must build on the 2007 reforms on medicine patents rules.

We look forward to working with President Obama to create a new American trade and globalization policy, starting with the process of reviewing our old trade agreement model and formulating a new approach which can be debuted in the context of the TPP process. It will be challenging to remedy the considerable damage that our past trade policies have wrought, however we are confident that working together, we can replace the failed trade policies of the past with those that deliver broadly shared benefits and thus earn broad support.

Comments on the TPP
Executive Committee of Citizens Trade Campaign
Document: USTR-2009-0041-0051
Comments Concerning an Environmental Review of the Proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Environmental Investigation Agency, Friends of the Earth US, Sierra Club, June 2, 2010
National Farmers Union

Document: USTR-2009-0041-0011
President Hoffa, Int. Brotherhood of Teamsters
Teamsters Will Support Trade Pact That Protects Workers

Public Citizen’s Detailed Comments
Global Trade Watch on the TPP Trade Agreement

350+ groups to USTR on how to structure a new TPP March 18th, 2009
Comment from David Frengel, Penn United
Document: USTR-2009-0041-0002
Comment from Steve Neubeck, Jobs With Justice
Document: USTR-2009-0041-0006
Comment from Humane Society International
Document: USTR-2009-0041-0042
Comment from International Fund for Animal Welfare
Document: USTR-2009-0041-0035
Comment from US Wheat Associates
Document: USTR-2009-0041-0010

Previous Comments from Public Citizen on the TPP March 9, 2009

See all comments to the USTR

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THINK YOUR TAX DOLLARS ARE BEING SUCKED AWAY BY DEFENSE INDUSTRY FRAUD, HEALTH CARE, FOR-PROFIT EDUCATION, AND FINANCIAL INDUSTRY FRAUD? MOVE OVER, NOW IT IS THE LAWYERS TURN (AS THOUGH THEIR ROLE IN THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE GIG WASN'T ENOUGH) AS GOVERNMENTS AGREE TO KEEP POLICIES IN PLACE THAT ARE BUSINESS-FRIENDLY REGARDLESS OF THE EFFECTS ON THE PUBLIC........ALL AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!

Profiting from injustice How law firms, arbitrators and financiers are fuelling an investment arbitration boom
27 November 2012 Cecilia Olivet Pia Eberhardt

A small club of international law firms, arbitrators and financial speculators are fuelling an investment arbitration boom that is costing taxpayers billions of dollars and preventing legislation in the public interest.

Download the report Profiting from Injustice (pdf, 1.1MB)

Download Executive summary in English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish

The last two decades have witnessed the silent rise of a powerful international investment regime that has ensnared hundreds of countries and put corporate profit before human rights and the environment.

International investment treaties are agreements made between states that determine the rights of investors in each other’s territories. They are used by powerful companies to sue governments if policy changes – even ones to protect public health or the environment – are deemed to affect their profits. By the end of 2011, over 3,000 international investment treaties had been signed, leading to a surge in legal claims at international arbitration tribunals. The costs of these legal actions weigh on governments in the form of large legal bills, weakening of social and environmental regulation and increased tax burdens for people, often in countries with critical social and economic needs.

Yet while these financial and social costs have started to become ever more visible, one sector has remained largely obscured from public view and that is the legal industry that has profited from this litigation boom. This report seeks to address that by examining the key players in the investment arbitration industry for the first time. It seeks to shine a light on law firms, arbitrators and litigation funders that have profited handsomely from lawsuits against governments.

The report shows that the arbitration industry is far from a passive beneficiary of international investment law. They are rather highly active players, many with strong personal and commercial ties to multinational companies and prominent roles in academia who vigorously defend the international investment regime. They not only seek every opportunity to sue governments, but also have campaigned forcefully and successfully against any reforms to the international investment regime.

The international investment arbitration system was justified and put in place by Western governments with the argument that a fair and neutral dispute settlement system was needed to protect their corporations’ investments from perceived bias and corruption within national courts. Investment arbitrators were to be the guardians and guarantors of this regime.

Yet rather than acting as fair and neutral intermediaries, it has become clear that the arbitration industry has a vested interest in perpetuating an investment regime that prioritises the rights of investors at the expense of democratically elected national governments and sovereign states. They have built a multimillion-dollar, self-serving industry, dominated by a narrow exclusive elite of law firms and lawyers whose interconnectedness and multiple financial interests raise serious concerns about their commitment to deliver fair and independent judgements. As a result, the arbitration industry shares responsibility for an international investment regime that is neither fair, nor independent, but deeply flawed and business-biased.

Key findings:

The number of investment arbitration cases, as well as the sum of money involved, has surged in the last two decades from 38 cases in 1996 (registered at ICSID, the World Bank’s body for administering such disputes) to 450 known investor-state cases in 2011. The amount of money involved has also expanded dramatically. In 2009/2010, 151 investment arbitration cases involved corporations demanding at least US$100 million from states.
The boom in arbitration has created bonanza profits for investment lawyers paid for by taxpayers. Legal and arbitration costs average over US$8 million per investor-state dispute, exceeding US$30 million in some cases. Elite law firms charge as much as US$1,000 per hour, per lawyer – with whole teams handling cases. Arbitrators also earn hefty salaries, amounting up to almost US$1 million in one reported case. These costs are paid by taxpayers, including in countries where people do not even have access to basic services. For example, the Philippine government spent US$58 million defending two cases against German airport operator Fraport; money that could have paid the salaries of 12,500 teachers for one year or vaccinated 3.8 million children against diseases such as TB, diphtheria, tetanus and polio.
The international investment arbitration industry is dominated by a small and tight-knit Northern hemisphere-based community of law firms and elite arbitrators. a) Three top law firms – Freshfields (UK), White & Case (US) and King & Spalding (US) – claim to have been involved in 130 investment treaty cases in 2011 alone. b) Just 15 arbitrators, nearly all from Europe, the US or Canada, have decided 55% of all known investment-treaty disputes. This small group of lawyers, referred to by some as an ‘inner mafia’, sit on the same arbitration panels, act as both arbitrators and counsels and even call on each other as witnesses in arbitration cases. This has led to growing concerns, including within the broader legal community, over conflicts of interest.
Arbitrators tend to defend private investor rights above public interest, revealing an inherent pro-corporate bias. Several prominent arbitrators have been members of the board of major multinational corporations, including those which have filed cases against developing nations. Nearly all share businesses’ belief in the paramount impor- tance of protecting private profits. In many cases concerning public interest decisions, such as measures taken by Argentina in the context of its economic crisis, arbitrators have failed to consider anything but corporations’ claims of lost profits in their rulings. Many arbitrators vocally rejected a proposal by International Court of Justice Judge Bruno Simma to give greater consideration to international environmental and human rights law in investment arbitration.
Law firms with specialised arbitration departments seek out every opportunity to sue countries – encouraging lawsuits against governments in crisis, most recently Greece and Libya, and promoting use of multiple invest- ment treaties to secure the best advantages for corporations. They encourage corporations to use lawsuit threats as a political weapon in order to weaken or prevent laws on public health or environmental protection. Investment lawyers have become the new international ‘ambulance chasers’, in a similar way to lawyers who chase hospital wagons to the emergency room in search for legal clients.
Investment lawyers, including elite arbitrators, have aggressively promoted investment arbitration as a necessary condition for the attraction of foreign investment, despite evidence to the contrary. Risks to states of acceding to investor-state arbitration are downplayed or dismissed.
Investment lawyers have encouraged governments to sign investment treaties using language that maximises possibilities for litigation. They have then used these vaguely worded treaty provisions to increase the number of cases. Statistical study based on 140 investment-treaty cases shows that arbitrators consistently adopt an expansive (claimant-friendly) interpretation of various clauses, such as the concept of investment. Meanwhile arbitration lawyers have taken a restrictive approach in international law when it comes to human and social rights.
Arbitration law firms as well as elite arbitrators have used positions of influence to actively lobby against any reforms to the international investment regime, notably in the US and the EU. Their actions, backed by corporations, succeeded in preventing changes that would enhance government’s policy space to regulate in the US investment treaties that had been proposed by US President Barack Obama when he came to office. Several arbitrators have also loudly denounced nations that have questioned the international investment regime.
There is a revolving door between investment lawyers and government policy-makers that bolsters an unjust investment regime. Several prominent investment lawyers were chief negotiators of investment treaties (or free trade agreements with investment protection chapters) and defended their governments in investor-state disputes. Others are actively sought as advisers and opinion-makers by government and influence legislation.
Investment lawyers have a firm grip on academic discourse on investment law and arbitration, producing a large part of the academic writings on the subject, controlling on average 74% of editorial boards of the key journals on investment law, and frequently failing to disclose the way they personally benefit from the system. This raises concerns over academic balance and independence.
The investment arbitration system is becoming increasingly integrated with the speculative financial world, with investment funds helping fund investor-state disputes in exchange for a share in any granted award or settlement. This is likely to further fuel the boom in arbitrations, increase costs for cash-strapped governments, and raises concerns of potential conflicts of interest because of a dense web of personal relationships that link financiers to arbitrators, lawyers and investors. Firms such as Juridica (UK), Burford (US) and Omni Bridgeway (NL) have already become an established part of international investment arbitration, in the absence of any regulation of their activities. This financialisation of investment arbitration has even extended to proposals to sell on packages of lawsuits to third parties, in the vein of the disastrous credit default swaps behind the global financial crisis.

Some countries have started to realise the injustices and inconsistencies of international investment arbitration and have initiated a retreat from the system. In spring 2011, the Australian government announced that it would no longer include investor-state dispute settlement provisions in its trade agreements. Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela have terminated several investment treaties and have withdrawn from ICSID. Argentina, which has been swamped with investor-claims related to emergency legislation in the context of its 2001-2002 economic crisis, refuses to pay arbitration awards. South Africa is engaged in a thorough overhaul of its investment policy to better align it with development considerations and has just announced that it will neither enter into new investment agreements nor renew old ones due to expire.

The backlash has not gone unnoticed by members of the investment arbitration industry. Some insiders are ready to confront the challenges with proposals for moderate reform, such as greater transparency. But these proposals do not address the inherent flaws and corporate bias of the investment arbitration system. We believe only systemic reform, based around principles that consider human rights and the environment as more important than corporate profits, can deliver necessary change. This must start with the termination of existing investment agreements and a moratorium on signing new ones.

Nevertheless even within the existing system, there are some steps that can be taken to help to roll back the power of the arbitration industry. This report calls for a switch to independent, transparent adjudicative bodies, where arbitrators’ independence and impartiality is secured; the introduction of tough regulations to guard against conflicts of interest; a cap on legal costs; and greater transparency regarding government lobbying by the industry. These steps will not by themselves transform the investor-state arbitration system. Without governments turning away from investment arbitration, the system will remain skewed in favour of big business and the highly lucrative arbitration industry.

Errata: Originally we had reported that arbitrator Albert Jan van den Berg had acted as counsel in 1 case. This was a mistake. We rectify that there is no known case in which Mr van den Berg has fulfilled that role.

International Investment Regime and BITs 76 pages Helen Burley (eds.) Profiting from Injustice (pdf, 1.22MB) About the authors Cecilia Olivet Cecilia Olivet is a political scientist who has specialised in the European Union's trade and investment agenda, the international investment regime and regional integration issues. Cecilia is Uruguayan, has a BA degree in International Relations from Universidad de la República in Uruguay and an MA in International Politics and East Asia from Warwick University, UK. In 2005, she joined TNI where she contributes to the Economic Justice, Corporate Power and Alternatives team with research, analysis, campaigning and network facilitation. She coordinates the initiative People's Agenda for Alternative Regionalisms (PAAR) and is involved in the work of networks such as Seattle to Brussels (S2B), Our World is not for Sale (OWINFS) and Bi-regional Network Europe-Latin America Enlazando Alternativas.

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BELOW YOU SEE WHO IS ON THESE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES WRITING THIS LEGISLATION. THEY WORK WITH A BROAD GROUP OF PEOPLE SO THEY AREN'T SOLELY RESPONSIBLE. NOTICE WHO THE DEMOCRATS ARE......SCHUMER OF NEW YORK WHO IS RANKED AS POSSIBLE SENATE LEADER AFTER HARRY REID......STABENOW OF MICHIGAN (YOU SEE NOW WHY THE UNIONS DIDN'T HAVE A CHANCE IN MICHIGAN ---THIRD WAY DEMOCRATS LEADING THE STATE)....WE SEE JOHN KERRY AND KNOW HOW HE WAS CHOSEN TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT. ALL OF THESE PEOPLE ARE ON THESE COMMITTEES BECAUSE THE ARE INTENT ON WRITING THESE BAD TRADE LAWS

United States Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness From Wikipedia,

The Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness is one of the six subcommittees within the Senate Committee on Finance

Members, 112th Congress The Subcommittee is chaired by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, and the Ranking Minority Member is Republican John Thune of South Dakota

Majority Minority

Democrats

Ron Wyden, Oregon, Chairman
Jay Rockefeller, West Virginia
John F. Kerry, Massachusetts
Charles E. Schumer, New York
Debbie Stabenow, Michigan
Bill Nelson, Florida
Robert Menendez, New Jersey

Republicans

John Thune, South Dakota, Ranking Member
Orrin G. Hatch, Utah
Chuck Grassley, Iowa
Mike Crapo, Idaho
Pat Roberts, Kansas

Ex officio

United States House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade
From Wikipedia,

The House Way and Means Subcommittee on Trade is one of the six subcommittees within the House Ways and Means Committee

Jurisdiction From the House Rules:

The jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Trade shall include bills and matters referred to the Committee on Ways and Means that relate to customs and customs administration including tariff and import fee structure, classification, valuation of and special rules applying to imports, and special tariff provisions and procedures which relate to customs operation affecting exports and imports; import trade matters, including import impact, industry relief from injurious imports, adjustment assistance and programs to encourage competitive responses to imports, unfair import practices including anti-dumping and countervailing duty provisions, and import policy which relates to dependence on foreign sources of supply; commodity agreements and reciprocal trade agreements including multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations and implementation of agreements involving tariff and non-tariff trade barriers to and distortions of international trade; international rules, organizations and institutional aspects of international trade agreements; budget authorizations for the customs revenue functions of the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. International Trade Commission, and the U.S. Trade Representative; and special trade-related problems involving market access, competitive conditions of specific industries, export policy and promotion, access to materials in short supply, bilateral trade relations including trade with developing countries, operations of multinational corporations, and trade with non-market economies.

Members, 112th Congress Majority Minority

Republicans

Kevin Brady, Texas, Chairman
Geoff Davis, Kentucky
Dave Reichert, Washington
Wally Herger, California
Devin Nunes, California
Vern Buchanan, Florida
Adrian Smith, Nebraska
Aaron Schock, Illinois
Lynn Jenkins, Kansas

Democrats

Jim McDermott, Washington, Ranking Member
Richard Neal, Massachusetts
Lloyd Doggett, Texas
Joe Crowley, New York
John Larson, Connecticut

Ex officio

Dave Camp, Michigan

Sander Levin, Michigan
Charles B. Rangel, New York

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October 08th, 2012

10/8/2012

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THIS BLOG GOES TO THE HEART OF PUBLIC ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND HOW THE MEDIA FAILS TO REPORT IN AN ACCURATE WAY. BALTIMORE HAS THE LAW FROM TWO YEARS AGO THAT STATE CAMERAS AND A TV PUBLIC ACCESS WILL OPEN THE BOARD OF ESTIMATE MEETINGS TO THE PUBLIC, YET, SOMEHOW THAT NEVER HAS HAPPENED. INSTEAD WE DEPEND ON WHAT IS PRINTED BY CAPTURED MEDIA.

This morning the news today is the astounding figure of 93% of US earnings these few years having gone to the 1%. This has been the trend for years, but it has reach a pinnacle. Believe that they intend to keep this % with the incumbents they have in place. Top reasons for this %: Failure to end Bush Tax Cuts; failure to bring back trillions in fraud; Bernanke's Fed policy giving free money; trillions in tax breaks to corporations in the guise of 'job creation' simply used to build corporate infrastructure, to have taxpayers pay corporate R and D expenses and Human Resources expenses. Your corporate Third Way Democratic politician is legislating all that. AND YOU THOUGHT THEY WERE DEADLOCKED AND POLARIZED!

A local Maryland example can be seen with 2 items from this week: Baltimore's last Board of Estimates meeting and O'Malley holding his head low as he announced his tax surcharge on Maryland's utility rate payers to pay Exelon's operational and capital development costs. THESE TWO EXAMPLES SHOW HOW THE TOP 1% ARE MAKING 97% OF THE WEALTH. THEY ARE ALLOWING THE PEOPLE 3% BECAUSE, AFTER ALL, WE HAVE TO EAT IN ORDER TO WORK.

So, BGE is at the Board of Estimate meeting to protest a 3% rate hike the city charges BGE for doing business. BGE's protest was this: We note that the city had a $600,000 surplus last year from this 'doing business' account and has never had instances where this account has not been adequate. There is no demonstrated need for an increase. To which Rawlings-Blake flunkies say 'we have plans for that money that haven't been listed on accounts'.....capital expenditures roll from year to year. BGE states 'we have a criteria for approval agreement' with the city that states we have the right to know and approve how those funds in this 'doing business' accounts are used. Rawlings-Blake flunkies say 'we aren't required to get your approval for anything'.

RAWLINGS-BLAKE SAYS SHE DOESN'T KNOW WHY BGE IS WORRIED ABOUT THIS RATE HIKE BECAUSE ALL THEY NEED TO DO IS PASS IT ON TO THE RATEPAYER.

It comes out in conversation that the $600,000 looks to be heading to the Enterprise Zone development in Dundalk to build utility conduits for underground cables for these wealthy developments. This is the underground cables that everyone in Maryland has been shouting for because of the multiple power outages. THE REASON THIS IS NOT DOCUMENTED IS THAT WE SEE HOW THIS MONEY COLLECTED FROM RATEPAYERS IN THE FORM OF RATE HIKES WILL BE FUNNELLED. THE GRID UPGRADES ARE ALREADY TARGETING WEALTHY DEVELOPMENTS AND COMMUNITIES.

I asked the Baltimore Sun reporter covering the Board of Estimate meeting if he was going to write an article on this and he says ' I didn't hear anything' and indeed, there was no press. I HAVE WRITTEN THE BOARD OF ESTIMATES TWICE ASKING THEM TO GET MEETING ROOM CAMERAS UP AND RUNNING ON PUBLIC ACCESS TV STATION 25 AS PER CITY LEGISLATION PASSED TWO YEARS AGO.REQUIRING THIS AND EACH TIME I AM TOLD IT WILL HAPPEN IN A MONTH....AND DOESN'T.

BELOW YOU SEE MY LETTER TO BALTIMORE'S PUBLIC JUSTICE CENTER REGARDING THE FAILURE TO OPEN THE BALTIMORE BOARD OF ESTIMATES TO PUBLIC SCRUTINY BY FULFILLING CITY COUNCIL LEGISLATION STATING THESE MEETINGS WILL BE TELEVISED.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!

Now we hear O'Malley telling us that his tax surcharge on BGE ratepayers to pay for the grid upgrades we all demanded of the corporation is necessary and will be 'just a few dollars a month'. Remember, it was O'Malley that assured us this BGE/Exelon merger would not bring rate increases and it was O'Malley that assured us a few years back that a 75% rate increase requested by Constellation/BGE would not happen. Well, this is it. This 'small rate increse' will be close to this 75% number. We already know that O'Malley's hand-picked Maryland Public Service Commission will approve those increases. It happened in Exelon's home of Chicago just a few years ago. These Third Way corporate Democrats are writing laws and policy that has you and I constantly paying all aspects of corporate business expense while letting them openly defraud us with no consequences.

THIS IS WHY THEY HAVE 93% OF THE WEALTH CREATED! DO YOU HEAR YOUR MEDIA OUTLET TELLING YOU THIS?

NOT IN MARYLAND YOU DON'T!!!

I SENT THIS BLOG TO THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS FOR PUBLIC JUSTICE/INTEREST. THESE ORGANIZATIONS ARE TASKED WITH PUBLIC SERVICE. DO YOU HEAR THEM? DO YOU WANT THEM SHOUTING PUBLICLY ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING BEHIND CLOSED DOORS? YES WE DO! I'M GOING TO INCLUDE THE OPEN MEETING BLOG AS WELL:

The Public Justice Center
works with people and communities to confront the laws, practices, and institutions that cause injustice, poverty, and discrimination. We advocate in the courts, legislatures, and government agencies, educate the public, and build coalitions, all to advance our mission of “pursuing systemic change to build a just society.”

Civil Justice Inc.
Phillip Robinson, Executive Director
Civil Justice Inc.
520 West Fayette Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
http://www.civiljusticenetwork.org/
probinson@civiljusticenetwork.org
(410) 706-0174
(410) 706-3196 (Fax)
Civil Justice Inc. is a Maryland not-for-profit corporation formed for the purpose of increasing the delivery of legal services to clients of low and moderate income while promoting a statewide network of solo, small firm and community based lawyers who share a common commitment to increasing access to justice through traditional and non-traditional means. Civil Justice is an affiliated program of the University of Maryland School of Law and works closely with the School of Law to promote public interest legal careers for students and graduates. This partnership includes work with the School of Law's clinical programs where Civil Justice Network attorneys mentor students and assist clients served by the program. Civil Justice network attorneys routinely speak at School of Law functions and programs for alumni and students alike. Civil Justice also sponsors a "Consumer Law Clerkship" position for qualified University of Maryland School of Law students. This clerkship provides students with hands-on experience in the area of consumer law which includes litigation, research, and client contact.

A Message from the Maryland People’s Counsel Welcome to the Official website of the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel. Maryland OPC is an independent State agency. Our mission is to represent the interests of residential consumers of electricity, natural gas, telecommunications and private water services in Maryland. NEW EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS FOR UTILITY CUSTOMERS and ADVOCATES [CLICK HERE FOR WELCOME MESSAGE] CONSUMER CORNER HAS THE FULL LIST OF VIDEOS We are very active in a variety of PSC cases right now. OPC staff is working every day on a variety of cost, service and consumer protection issues, like Standard Offer Service (SOS) administrative charges, service reliability standards, supplier licensing and marketing issues, smart meter deployment, and energy efficiency programs. You can do a quick check of important issues in our HOT TOPICS list, and find the dates for HEARINGS. We also post energy supplier price information every month. If you have any suggestions or comments, please use the Contact Us link to share your thoughts with us. ~Paula M. Carmody

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THIS IS THE NEWS FROM WHEN REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR EHRLICH WAS DOING THEN WHAT THIRD WAY DEMOCRAT O'MALLEY IS DOING NOW. O'MALLEY USED THIS TO CAMPAIGN AGAINST EHRLICH JUST AS O'MALLEY FOUGHT AGAINST GAMBLING INTERESTS FOR THE GOOD OF MARYLAND FAMILIES. YOU DO NOT HEAR ANY REFERENCE TO THIS FLIP-FLOPPING FOR POLITICAL GAIN DO YOU?

Baltimore takes right steps against BGE rate hikes
By THE ANNAPOLIS CAPITAL EDITORIAL BOARD

We have to give credit to the people in Baltimore city who apparently have more backbone than state officials to do something serious about the 72 percent rate hike executed by Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.

Mayor Martin O’Malley and city officials convinced a Circuit Court to halt BGE’s plan to give ratepayers an option of spreading out the increase over a year. The ruling blocks the plan only temporarily, but buys the city time to convince the court to order the state’s largest utility back to the drawing board. One can only hope elected officials and the Public Service Commission will get another crack at doing this right. And doing it right means stopping the merger and retrieving BGE’s profits as a regulated utility.

If there is a need for more evidence that the present PSC doesn’t get it, note the reaction of chairman Kenneth Schlisler. He said in a press release that the city’s action isn’t about helping ratepayers, but about “petty partisan politics.”

Here’s what it is about: cleaning up the mess you left BGE’s customers. Frankly, we don’t care which political party gets the credit, as long as residential electric customers get a break. Constellation Energy Group, BGE’s parent company, bamboozled the governor and his hand-picked Public Service Commission. Ratepayers got stuck with an obscene rate increase while profits and dividends soared for Constellation. While ratepayers began to count their pennies to prepare for higher electric bills, Constellation executives counted their millions to prepare for a merger with Florida Power and Light.

The General Assembly tried to derail the rate hike, first by reconstituting the inept PSC and then by blocking the merger. In one of the most inexplicable political decisions ever, the governor vetoed those efforts and the Senate was unable to come up with a rate-relief compromise. Without a threat to the lucrative merger, the state lost its primary bargaining chip. Now the rate increases and the merger are on a fast track.

The court’s decision prevents the utility from educating its customers about the phase-in of rates, which could become a Pyrrhic victory if the court eventually relents and BGE gets its way. However, times are desperate and any roadblock thrown in the way of this train wreck is good news to us. We would hope, as Sen. John Astle suggests, that Annapolis and Anne Arundel County join in the suit. In fact, every jurisdiction should join.

Constellation says it has a right to pass along any increases caused by rising fuel prices. But it does not have a right to pass along tens of millions of dollars in obscene executive bonuses, or the billions in stock profits that will be reaped as a result of the sale of the company. The state has an obligation to protect its citizens from such gouging, and should re-regulate BGE and stop this merger.

We wish Baltimore good luck.
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REPORTS PUT THIS INCREASE EVEN HIGHER.....CLOSER TO $16 EACH MONTH ALMOST DOUBLING ENERGY BILLS IN MARYLAND.

BGE requests rate increase for electric, gas distribution Proposal would add $11.80 a month to typical residential bill By Steve Kilar, The Baltimore Sun 9:45 p.m. EDT, July 27, 2012

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. is seeking to raise distribution rates for electricity and natural gas, a move that would add about $11.80 a month to the median residential bill.

The rate increase is needed to pay for updated infrastructure, utility officials said Friday. If the proposal is approved by the Public Service Commission, the median bill would rise each billing cycle by about $7.20 for electricity and $4.60 for natural gas.

It's a particularly tricky time to seek a rate increase, as BGE faces consumer backlash and a regulatory probe stemming from its response to a powerful derecho storm last month. High winds knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of customers in broad swaths of Central Maryland, and critics said BGE and other utilities weren't prepared and failed to repair lines quickly.

"There's never a good time for a rate increase," said Mark D. Case, BGE's vice president for strategy and regulatory affairs. "We are trying to deliver on higher customer expectations."

But consumer advocates balked. Companies such as BGE should find other sources of income to strengthen their grid and invest in cost-cutting technologies before requesting rate increases, said Jenny Levin, state advocate for the Maryland Public Interest Research Foundation, a consumer advocacy group.

"If they want rate increases, they need to show they can provide reliable energy," Levin said. "They need to be looking at alternatives ... before they come asking for more money from ratepayers."

Even if the increases are approved, BGE's rates would still be lower than those of most regional peers, Case said. And the company offers a number of ways to help keep customer costs down, including energy efficiency programs, he said.

A bill stabilization adjustment, which makes up for revenue lost to such efficiency programs, raised the ire of customers this month when they learned they would be charged the small fee even though many were without power after the storm.

The rate increase proposed Friday would enable the utility to recover money already spent on updating aging poles and wires, Case said. Last year, BGE spent $594 million on construction investments.

The company projects that the rate increases would bring in $204.2 million per year, according to the application with the commission. That money also would help BGE leverage the money to cover about $3 billion in updates to its electricity and gas distribution system over the next five years.

BGE serves about 1.2 million electricity customers and 650,000 natural gas customers in Maryland. The proposed rate increase relates only to the cost of distribution, not commodity costs. Distribution charges typically make up about a quarter of a residential bill.

The company's last distribution rate increase took effect in December 2010, raising the typical residential customer's monthly bill by $1.34 for electricity and 85 cents for natural gas. BGE has asked for electricity distribution increases only twice in nearly two decades; gas delivery rates have gone up five times in that period, Case said.

"We've been looking at this closely over the last year or so," Case said. The increase is not a reaction to recent weather-related outages, he said.

In early June, executives of the local utility's new owner, Chicago-based Exelon Corp., told stock analysts during a meeting in New York that BGE had delayed filing the rate increase request. BGE wanted to wait until its former parent company, Constellation Energy Group, finalized its merger with Exelon.

The $7.9 billion deal, which closed in March, included a rate increase as part of the merger plans.

"It's pretty startling that they think the filing of a rate case is a sign of a successful merger," said People's Counsel Paula M. Carmody, whose office is an independent state agency that advocates for consumers on utility issues. Her office plans to "vigorously challenge" the rate increase request, she said.

Though her office knew the request was coming, Carmody said, she was surprised at the submission's timing. Her office and the Public Service Commission have launched investigations into BGE's performance in the aftermath of the June 29 storm.

Gov. Martin O'Malley, also in response to the storm, set up a work group this week to come up with ways to improve the ability of the state's electrical grid to withstand storms. O'Malley asked for recommendations within 60 days.

The Public Service Commission could choose to approve only a portion of BGE's proposed rate increase. Last week, the commission rejected the full requests submitted by Pepco, the utility that serves the Washington region, and Delmarva Power & Light Co.

The commission approved $18 million of the $68 million distribution rate increase requested by Pepco and less than half of the $25 million rate increase sought by Delmarva Power. Both utilities, subsidiaries of Pepco Holdings Inc., filed their requests in mid-December.

Copyright © 2012, The Baltimore Sun
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BGE overdue on $5.5 million in bills to Baltimore, officials say City says BGE hasn't made payments for use of its conduit system By Luke Broadwater, The Baltimore Sun 6:09 p.m. EDT, October 7, 2012

Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. is past due on nearly $5.5 million in payments owed to the city for use of a conduit system that carries power and telecommunications lines, according to city officials.

The late payments are causing "cash flow" issues for city government and could delay the start of capital projects, said Jamie Kendrick, deputy director for administration in the city's Transportation Department, which manages the conduit system. Kendrick said the city will either try to negotiate a payment plan with the company or refer the matter to Solicitor George Nilson for possible litigation.

"We are consulting with the Law Department to determine the collection method," Kendrick said. "One option is to go to court, another is to try and negotiate something."

BGE spokesman Rob Gould said the company is disputing a bill it received last year and that it only recently received the second bill that city officials say is past due. In fact, he said, company officials only learned of the second bill when The Baltimore Sun inquired about it.

"We have no record of receiving one of these bills," Gould said.

BGE pays the city for access to Baltimore's elaborate conduit system that consists of 3.9 million feet of concrete casing, at a cost of 90 cents per foot of power cable. The system's conduits carry wires for electricity, telephone service, fiber optics and street and traffic lights. The system is accessed from more than 14,000 manhole structures and stretches throughout most of the city, except its outskirts.

The city relies on payments from BGE and other users to help upgrade the system. Kendrick said the company's late payments have caused "no operational impact yet, but there soon will be."

BGE critics seized on the company's unpaid bills, saying it is quick to cut off residents' power when they miss payments.

"It's very shocking that they're doing that since they're so insistent on everyone else paying," said Chris Bush, a Catonsville accountant and frequent critic of the company who has battled BGE in court over rate hikes. "They cut off people all the time. I'm amazed they have the gall to not pay their bills."

BGE has not paid a bill for $590,000 that was due in August of 2011 or a $4.9 million bill due in May, according to city officials. The company has until the end of October to pay a third bill for $5.4 million, officials said.

Gould said the company disputes the first bill, hadn't received the second and has requested supporting documentation before paying any of the invoices.

"We're going to review the bills," he said.

City officials pointed out that the company should be aware it is billed twice a year.

Community activist Leo Burroughs, who helped organize a coalition to protest BGE rate hikes, encouraged the city to get tough with the company. He also noted a recent Baltimore Sun report that showed businesses, nonprofits and government offices were past due on more than $10 million in water bill payments as well.

"The city has an obligation to collect revenue from big businesses and fat cats, just as they do from lower-income and middle-income people," Burroughs said. "It is outrageous that the city would not take the appropriate legal action to bring to court those big businesses that fail to honor their legal obligations to pay for the services provided by the city."

In June, BGE announced it was seeking to raise distribution rates for electricity and natural gas, a move that would add about $11.80 a month to the median residential bill and must be approved by the Public Service Commission. The company projects that the rate increases would bring in $204.2 million per year.

A related dispute between BGE and city officials flared Wednesday before the Board of Estimates, when the panel voted to raise the rate it charges BGE for access to the conduit system by nearly 3 cents per foot of cable to 92.7 cents.

Kimberly Curry, senior counsel for BGE, spoke out against the increase at the meeting, calling it unnecessary and saying it could end up saddling the company's customers with higher bills.

Gould said the $1.5 million in charges would be passed on to the company's 1.2 million customers across central Maryland, so that the increase to each customer's bill would be minimal. Any rate increase, he added, would need regulatory approval.

Kendrick said much of the rate increase would be spent on improvements to the conduit system on Washington Boulevard, Dundalk Avenue, Charles Street and Broening Highway — some of the system's major corridors.

luke.broadwater@baltsun.com

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Actually it was Mayor Rawlings-Blake and her team that told BGE to send the 3% rate increase the city wants from BGE on to taxpayers. Gould did not mention this possibility. That is a very different take on this story.

BGE's protest has to do largely with the city's unwillingness to comply with the 'criteria for approval' clause that gives companies that pay into this 'doing business account' the right to know what to which projects these funds are being allocated. Just as the citizens of Baltimore are being kept in the dark regarding the how their tax money is being spent by the Board of Estimates, we see the Board doing the same to businesses, in this case BGE.

Now BGE is not fighting for the ratepayer as they do indeed intend to have ratepayers pay for their operational/infrastructure costs in a rate hile that will reach almost 75% (remember the similar attempt that O'Malley fought off for political gain against Ehrlich?)....it is back. They are simply trying to position their interests above the Wall Street developers of the Enterprise Zones.

It revealed that money is very 'fungible' in the city and the $600,000 that Gould used as an example as money not spent was actually going to the Dundalk Enterprise Zones to bury their cables. Grid upgrades and these rate hikes look to fund wealthy development.

We all want these expenditures to be public and open to public input.

Elizabeth1925 at 9:14 AM October 8, 2012 The Mayor relies on the Department of Tranportation to handle this. Mr Kendrick, you stood at the Board of Estimates last week to seek a rate increase for the conduit in the City's right of way. Did you not know BG&E was past due and owed the City $5 Million? It is hard to believe that the past due fees never came up or that no one in your very large City agency watches over the billing and collection of BG&E conduit fees since it important to your agency's capital projects. It is you, Mr. Kendrick, who misrepresented what was really happening at the Board of Estimates last week. And it is your agency that has not done its job in ensuring the City receives what is due. Council President Young and Comptroller Pratt: everyone understands that you hold only two of the five votes at the Board of Estimates. But you must learn to us that limited power to find out what the city agenies are up to and to force the city agencies to tell you what is really happening. The city agencies-- be it MOIT about telephones or DOT about conduit fees-- think that they can withhold information or indeed make up things. One thing you have the power to do right now: when an agency has misbehaved, none of their action items should be on routine agenda at the Board of Estimates. Make the agency heads come and stand in front of you every Wednesday until they learn to be truthful.

I thank Elizabeth for speaking of holding people accountable, but her indication that these leaders on the Board of Estimates may somehow be kept in the dark is not realistic. As someone who always attends these Board meetings, I knew these things were happening as does everyone else attending these Board meetings.

I would suggest that the Baltimore Sun and other city organizations push the Board of Estimates to enact the legislation from 2 years ago to place these meetings on public access TV. The cameras are in the meeting room and only need to be turned on and tuned into by the public.....but then the local media would not be able to control the information coming from the meetings?

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October 06th, 2012

10/6/2012

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Our actions this week should include:

YOU'LL REMEMBER THE BALTIMORE BREW'S ARTICLE THAT SHOWED UTTER FRUSTRATION AND CONTEMPT FOR THE OPEN MEETING LAW THAT BASICALLY IS WINDOW-DRESSING. I WROTE TWO REQUESTS TO THIS OPEN MEETING DEPARTMENT DEMANDING THAT THEY PROVIDE PEOPLE WITH A SINGLE-SOURCE LISTING OF ALL PUBLIC MEETINGS WELL IN ADVANCE OF THE MEETING. THE POLITICIANS KNOW THAT PEOPLE CANNOT PERUSE EVERY AGENCY WEBSITE TO KNOW WHEN MEETINGS OCCUR. IT IS VERY EASY TO DO.....SIMPLY PROVIDE A ENTRY SCREEN TO EACH AGENCY AND REQUIRE ENTRY OF NEXT MEETING DATE AND AGENDA IMMEDIATELY INTO THAT SCREEN OR AS SOON AS THAT INFO IS AVAILABLE. THAT SCREEN WOULD THEN BECOME A LIST BY MEETING DATE OF ALL PUBLIC MEETINGS AND WOULD ALSO PROVIDE A PUBLIC FEEDBACK LOOP. THIS LIST COULD BE LINKED TO WEBSITES LIKE MINE FOR EASY ACCESS.

THIS IS NOT HARD AND IT MUST BE DONE!!!

AGAIN, THIS IS GOVERNOR O'MALLEY'S BOARD
AND ATTORNEY GENERAL GANSLER'S OVERSIGHT THAT IS FAILING.

Open Meetings Compliance Board Complaint Procedures

If you believe that a public body has violated the Act, you may file a complaint with the Open Meetings Compliance Board.

The Board encourages members of the public who have questions about a public body's compliance with the Act to pose their questions first to a member of the public body or its staff or counsel.

1. How to file a Complaint

Send a complaint letter by mail or e-mail to the Open Meetings Compliance Board at this address: Open Meetings Compliance Board, c/o Attorney General's Office, 200 St. Paul Place, Baltimore, MD 21202, or OpenGov@oag.state.md.us. You must sign your complaint and include a return address. The Board accepts scanned signatures.

YOU WILL NOTE THAT EVEN THE LINK TO THE AGENCY ABOVE DOESN'T WORK......GO TO THE WEBSITE TO MAKE THE COMPLAINT. THESE POLITICIANS ARE ANIMALS!!!
VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT OF OFFICE!!!
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Rally at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore: End 3/5 in Baltimore!Public Event · By Unite Here Local 7

- Wednesday, October 10, 2012
- 4:30pm until 6:00pm in EDT
McKeldin Square (Pratt and Light Streets, Baltimore MD)
There are hotel workers in Baltimore who make only 3/5 of what union hotel workers make in Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Francisco Airport and Chicago Airport markets. In these same markets, the room rates that customers pay are comparable to those in Baltimore.

Workers at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore have come forward to fight for a fair and democratic process to decide on union representation. Baltimore hotel workers should not be making 3/5ths of what union hotel workers are making in cities where the rooms cost the same!

UNITE HERE Local 7 (443) 438-5607 www.facebook.com/UNITEHERELocal7

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PLEASE ATTEND THESE MEETINGS AND THANK THESE GROUPS FOR THEIR ADVOCACY AND TELL THEM YOUR REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES! IT IS CRITICAL TO SPEAK OUT AS CONDITIONS ARE ABOUT TO BECOME WORSE!!!!!!

It’s time to engage, get energized, and connect with friends who share your vision for a world without homelessness. Click here to RSVP for the Annual Community Meeting.

The Annual Community Meeting
October 9, 2012
5:30 – 7:30 pm

Health Care for the Homeless
421 Fallsway, Baltimore, MD 21202

RSVP at meeting.hchmd.org or call 443-703-1336

Let’s celebrate the lives you’ve changed and build the future for those who still need us. Together we make a powerful community. Let’s reaffirm that we will never give up.

For more information about our work, visit hchmd.org.

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DO NOT ALLOW THESE CANNED CAMPAIGN ISSUES ON TAXES FRAME THE DEBATE. WE KNOW WE NEED THIS BANK TRANSACTION TAX AND WE KNOW WE NEED THE TOP TAX RATE AT 70%, NOT THE SAME AS YOU AND I IF WE ARE TO REVERSE INCOME INEQUITY. WE HEAR NOTHING OF THIS IN THE MEDIA AS THEY ONLY REPEAT THE CORPORATE POLITICIANS STANCES.

CALL AND WRITE YOUR INCUMBENTS AND MEDIA TO DEMAND THIS ISSUE BE IN THE DEBATES.

September 18, 2012
CONTACT: Nikolina Lazic at nikolina@prwatch.org

TELL CONGRESS IT'S TIME FOR A ROBIN HOOD TAX! Wall Street gambling and greed collapsed the global economy and we are still reeling.

Politicians claim America is “broke” to justify layoffs and draconian cuts in critical services.

We have a better idea.

Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, introduced a bill to place a tiny tax on the sale of stocks, bonds, and derivatives. This bill has the potential to raise billions in desperately needed revenue while clamping down the Wall Street casino that continues to threaten our financial stability.

Join PRwatch.org and RootsAction.org and hundreds of other organizations in calling for a Robin Hood Tax.

It's not a tax on the people, its a tax for the people!

Please forward this email widely to like-minded friends.

-- The PRWatch.org team
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GET TO THESE MEETINGS EARLY IF YOUR WANT TO SPEAK.....SIGN IN IS EARLY AND LIMITED IN NUMBER.

OCTOBER 9, 2012

School Board Meeting Calendar by Date
The public session begins at 6:00 p.m.and may last 3 to 4 hours. For additional information about Board meetings, call the School Board Office at 410-396-8709
at 200 E. North Avenue,

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August 15th, 2012

8/15/2012

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Today I will highlight the Maryland public losses to corporations brought to light just this week. It is not the Tea Party radicals that make Maryland Democrats devoted to corporations, it is the fact that they are corporate Democrats. If your labor leaders, your social justice leaders, and community organizations aren't calling to vote incumbents out, they are not working for the lower/middle class.

Maryland Assembly voted to expand gambling, give casinos a tax cut, and created a separate commission to work for these casinos against public interest. I spoke with someone who goes to these casinos in Maryland and he says they are filled with seniors. They prey on seniors and they abuse their labor. Does that sound Democratic? No. We watched a labor film at the regional labor rally that showed 5 years of strikes against casinos like MGM in Vegas just to get workplace abuse and poverty wages addressed. Maryland will not protect strikers. Again, it is Hispanic workers hit the hardest with abuse. Your incumbent says 'Good Paying Jobs and Revenue For Schools'. Baltimore says poverty jobs and revenue for property taxes, not schools. That is of course where any revenue that is collected, if any will end. Remember, these casinos get business tax credits that negate a great amount of the revenue they end up paying. WE WERE 'PLAYED' AS THE COMMERCIAL SAYS!

I sat at the Public Service Commission public meeting on BGE outages. The first thing they noted was low attendance in Baltimore. A speaker reminded them that there was only notice the day before so no one knew of the meeting....which is the point. There was a listing one day in the Baltimore Sun. The points made at the meeting are that BGE service has been declining for decades, one person called service in Maryland Third World....he was right on. Maintenance, communications, customer service are all the standard arguments as BGE and Exelon eliminate all that for profit. I reminded the Board that its decisions always go with the corporation and will probably raise rates for the public to pay for past operation costs and future infrastructure . I said that a billion dollar company asking for this was telling the Board that BGE needs to be Public. It is important to remember with this Public Service Commission, as with this new Gambling Commission, and Baltimore's Public Works Commission.......are all staffed by appointees your Governor and Mayor select and your elected officials vote them into office. YOUR INCUMBENT IS NOT FORCED TO DO THIS.....THEY LOSE MORE THAN THEY GAIN FOR YOUR COMMUNITY OVER AND AGAIN, AND THEY VOTE THESE COMMISSION HEADS AND ASSEMBLY LEADERS WHO WORK AGAINST THE INTERESTS OF PEOPLE INTO LEADERSHIP POSITIONS.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT!!!!

Mike Busch and Mike Miller are continually voted by your incumbent to lead the Maryland Assembly. They are the ones fighting for corporate interests along with O'Malley. WE MUST CHANGE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP. WE MUST RUN CANDIDATES IN THE COMING ELECTIONS!

THERE YOU GO ....BELOW YOU SEE AN ARTICLE SHOWING THE HEALTH SYSTEM BOHEMOTH WITH HUGE PROFITS. PROFITS MADE BY REDUCING WHO USES THE EMERGENCY ROOM, HOW MUCH STAFF ARE PAID, AND HOW MANY STAFF ARE USED.
JOHNS HOPKINS IS PUSHING THIS IN MARYLAND AND YOUR INCUMBENT IS MAKING IT POSSIBLE. DO YOU HEAR MARYLAND'S HEALTH CARE FOR ALL? YOU WON'T........THAT'S NOT THEIR TASK! THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO WILL ACCESS HEALTH CARE WILL BE THOSE WITH PAID INSURANCE. YOU KNOW CORPORATIONS ARE PUSHING YOU OUT WITH CO-PAYS AND DEDUCTIBLES, SO WHO ARE THESE INSURED? THE UPPER-MIDDLE, AFFLUENT CLASS.

VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT!!!
Giant Hospital Chain Creates a Windfall for Private Equity
By JULIE CRESWELL and REED ABELSON Published: August 14, 2012

During the Great Recession, when many hospitals across the country were nearly brought to their knees by growing numbers of uninsured patients, one hospital system not only survived — it thrived.

Readers’ Comments "When a company is allowed to ask - Is it financially viable for us to treat this illness? - there is a huge conflict of interest. "Outraged in D-town, Denver

In fact, profits at the health care industry giant HCA, which controls 163 hospitals from New Hampshire to California, have soared, far outpacing those of most of its competitors.

The big winners have been three private equity firms — including Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate — that bought HCA in late 2006.

HCA’s robust profit growth has raised the value of the firms’ holdings to nearly three and a half times their initial investment in the $33 billion deal. The financial performance has been so impressive that HCA has become a model for the industry. Its success inspired 35 buyouts of hospitals or chains of facilities in the last two and a half years by private equity firms eager to repeat that windfall.

HCA’s emergence as a powerful leader in the hospital industry is all the more remarkable because only a decade ago the company was badly shaken by a wide-ranging Medicare fraud investigation that it eventually settled for more than $1.7 billion.

Among the secrets to HCA’s success: It figured out how to get more revenue from private insurance companies, patients and Medicare by billing much more aggressively for its services than ever before; it found ways to reduce emergency room overcrowding and expenses; and it experimented with ways to reduce the cost of medical staff, a move that sometimes led to conflicts with doctors and nurses over concerns about patient care.

In late 2008, for instance, HCA changed the billing codes it assigned to sick and injured patients who came into the emergency rooms. Almost overnight, the numbers of patients who HCA said needed more care, which would be paid for at significantly higher levels by Medicare, surged.

HCA, which had lagged the industry for those high-paying categories, jumped ahead of its competitors and was reimbursed accordingly. The change, which HCA’s executives said better reflected the service being provided, increased operating earnings by nearly $100 million in the first quarter of 2009.

To some, HCA successfully pushed the envelope in its interpretation of existing Medicare rules. “If HCA can do it, why can’t we?” asked a hospital consulting firm, the Advisory Board Company, in a presentation to its clients.

In one instance, HCA executives said a private insurer, which it declined to name, questioned the new billing system, forcing it to return some of the money it had collected.

The hospital giant also adopted a policy meant to address an issue that bedevils hospitals nationwide — reducing costs and overcrowding in its emergency rooms. For years, the hospital emergency room has been used by the uninsured as a de facto doctor’s office — a place for even the most minor of ailments. But emergency care is expensive and has become increasingly burdensome to hospitals in the last decade because of the rising number of uninsured patients.

HCA decided not to treat patients who came in with nonurgent conditions, like a cold or the flu or even a sprained wrist, unless those patients paid in advance. In a recent statement, HCA said that of the six million patients treated in its emergency rooms last year, 80,000, or about 1.3 percent, “ chose to seek alternative care options.”

“Many E.R.’s in America, particularly in densely populated urban areas where most HCA-affiliated facilities are located, have adopted a variety of systems to determine whether a patient in fact needs emergency care,” the statement said. “About half our hospitals have done so. Typically, our affiliated hospitals have two caregivers — usually a triage nurse and a physician — make that determination. It should be noted that other non-HCA affiliated hospitals are using similar processes to address E.R. issues.”

As HCA’s profits and influence grew, strains arose with doctors and nurses over whether the chain’s pursuit of profit may have, at times, come at the expense of patient care.

HCA had put in place a flexible staffing system that allowed it to estimate the number of patients it would have each day in its hospitals and alter the number of nurses it needed accordingly.

Several nurses interviewed said they were concerned that the system sometimes had led to inadequate staffing in important areas like critical care. In one measure of adequate staffing — the prevalence of bedsores in patients bedridden for long periods of time — HCA clearly struggled. Some of its hospitals fended off lawsuits over the problem in recent years, and were admonished by regulators over staffing issues more than once.

Many doctors interviewed at various HCA facilities said they had felt increased pressure to focus on profits under the private equity ownership. “Their profits are going through the roof, but, unfortunately, it’s occurring at the expense of patients,” said Dr. Abraham Awwad, a kidney specialist in St. Petersburg, Fla., whose complaints over the safety of the dialysis programs at two HCA-owned hospitals prompted state investigations.
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MARYLAND IS FRONT AND CENTER IN THIS PUSH TO PRIVATIZE WITH CHARTERS AND JOHNS HOPKINS HAS BUILT A STRONG PRIVATE NON-PROFIT COALITION TO DO IT IN BALTIMORE. AFTER UNDERSERVED SCHOOLS ARE GUTTED AND MADE INTO WORKPLACE HUMAN RESOURCES TRAINING CENTERS FOR CORPORATIONS WITH YOUR TAX DOLLAR, THEY WILL COME FOR THE MIDDLE-CLASS SCHOOLS.

YOUR INCUMBENT IS PUSHING THIS....VOTE YOUR INCUMBENT OUT!!!
Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From U.S. K-12 Market

Reuters | Posted: 08/02/2012 10:16 am Updated: 08/02/2012 12:18 pm

By Stephanie Simon

NEW YORK, Aug 1 (Reuters) - The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige.

Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.

"You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up," said Lytle, a partner at The Parthenon Group, a Boston consulting firm. "It could get really, really big."

Indeed, investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education.

The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors.

Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into -- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.

Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education.

The conference last week at the University Club, billed as a how-to on "private equity investing in for-profit education companies," drew a full house of about 100.

OUTSOURCING BASICS

In the venture capital world, transactions in the K-12 education sector soared to a record $389 million last year, up from $13 million in 2005. That includes major investments from some of the most respected venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, according to GSV Advisors, an investment firm in Chicago that specializes in education.

The goal: an education revolution in which public schools outsource to private vendors such critical tasks as teaching math, educating disabled students, even writing report cards, said Michael Moe, the founder of GSV.

"It's time," Moe said. "Everybody's excited about it."

Not quite everyone.

The push to privatize has alarmed some parents and teachers, as well as union leaders who fear their members will lose their jobs or their autonomy in the classroom.

Many of these protesters have rallied behind education historian Diane Ravitch, a professor at New York University, who blogs and tweets a steady stream of alarms about corporate profiteers invading public schools.

Ravitch argues that schools have, in effect, been set up by a bipartisan education reform movement that places an enormous emphasis on standardized test scores, labels poor performers as "failing" schools and relentlessly pushes local districts to transform low-ranked schools by firing the staff and turning the building over to private management.

President Barack Obama and both Democratic and Republican policymakers in the states have embraced those principles. Local school districts from Memphis to Philadelphia to Dallas, meanwhile, have hired private consultants to advise them on improving education; the strategists typically call for a broader role for private companies in public schools.

"This is a new frontier," Ravitch said. "The private equity guys and the hedge fund guys are circling public education."

Some of the products and services offered by private vendors may well be good for kids and schools, Ravitch said. But she has no confidence in their overall quality because "the bottom line is that they're seeking profit first."

Vendors looking for a toehold in public schools often donate generously to local politicians and spend big on marketing, so even companies with dismal academic results can rack up contracts and rake in tax dollars, Ravitch said.

"They're taking education, which ought to be in a different sphere where we're constantly concerned about raising quality, and they're applying a business metric: How do we cut costs?" Ravitch said.

BUDGET PRESSURES

Investors retort that public school districts are compelled to use that metric anyway because of reduced funding from states and the soaring cost of teacher pensions and health benefits. Public schools struggling to balance budgets have fired teachers, slashed course offerings and imposed a long list of fees, charging students to ride the bus, to sing in the chorus, even to take honors English.

The time is ripe, they say, for schools to try something new -- like turning to the private sector for help.

"Education is behind healthcare and other sectors that have utilized outsourcing to become more efficient," private equity investor Larry Shagrin said in the keynote address to the New York conference.

He credited the reform movement with forcing public schools to catch up. "There's more receptivity to change than ever before," said Shagrin, a partner with Brockway Moran & Partners Inc, in Boca Raton, Florida. "That creates opportunity."

Speakers at the conference identified several promising arenas for privatization.

Education entrepreneur John Katzman urged investors to look for companies developing software that can replace teachers for segments of the school day, driving down labor costs.

"How do we use technology so that we require fewer highly qualified teachers?" asked Katzman, who founded the Princeton Review test-prep company and now focuses on online learning.

Such businesses already have been drawing significant interest. Venture capital firms have bet more than $9 million on Schoology, an online learning platform that promises to take over the dreary jobs of writing and grading quizzes, giving students feedback about their progress and generating report cards.

DreamBox Learning has received $18 million from investors to refine and promote software that drills students in math. The software is billed as "adaptive," meaning it analyzes responses to problems and then poses follow-up questions precisely pitched to a student's abilities.

The charter school chain Rocketship, a nonprofit based in San Jose, California, turns kids over to DreamBox for two hours a day. The chain boasts that it pays its teachers more because it needs fewer of them, thanks to such programs. Last year, Rocketship commissioned a study that showed students who used DreamBox heavily for 16 weeks scored on average 2.3 points higher on a standardized math test than their peers.

SPECIAL ED AS A GROWTH MARKET

Another niche spotlighted at the private equity conference: special education.

Mark Claypool, president of Educational Services of America, told the crowd his company has enjoyed three straight years of 15 percent to 20 percent growth as more and more school districts have hired him to run their special-needs programs.

Autism in particular, he said, is a growth market, with school districts seeking better, cheaper ways to serve the growing number of students struggling with that disorder.

ESA, which is based in Nashville, Tennessee, now serves 12,000 students with learning disabilities or behavioral problems in 250 school districts nationwide.

"The knee-jerk reaction [to private providers like ESA] is, 'You're just in this to make money. The profit motive is going to trump quality,' " Claypool said. "That's crazy, because frankly, there are really a whole lot easier ways to make a living." Claypool, a former social worker, said he got into the field out of frustration over what he saw as limited options for children with learning disabilities.

Claypool and others point out that private firms have always made money off public education; they have constructed the schools, provided the buses and processed the burgers served at lunch. Big publishers such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have made hundreds of millions of dollars selling public school districts textbooks and standardized tests.

Critics see the newest rush to private vendors as more worrisome because school districts are outsourcing not just supplies but the very core of education: the daily interaction between student and teacher, the presentation of new material, the quick checks to see which kids have risen to the challenge and which are hopelessly confused.

At the more than 5,500 charter schools nationwide, private management companies -- some of them for-profit -- are in full control of running public schools with public dollars.

"I look around the world and I don't see any country doing this but us," Ravitch said. "Why is that?"
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THE DEVELOPMENT AND TAX CREDITS CONTINUE IN BALTIMORE AND MARYLAND AS SCHOOLS CLOSE, RECREATION CENTERS CLOSE, FIRE HOUSES CLOSE, AND JOBS ARE LOST IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR. WE HAVE A BUDGET DEFICIT YOU KNOW. SO THE COMMUNITIES THAT AGREE TO THE TIF LEVERAGING ARE THE COMMUNITIES AROUND THE HARBOR WHO BASICALLY ARE MAKING IT OK FOR THE ENTIRE CITY TO FORGO FUTURE TAX REVENUE. IT WAS FENCED INTO THEIR COMMUNITIES ANYWAY THEY SAY.....THE CITY WOULD NEVER SEE IT. ALL OF THESE BUSINESSES IN HARBOR POINT ARE NATIONAL CORPORATIONS MAKING HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS AND BILLION EACH YEAR AND THEY WILL NOT PAY PROPERTY TAXES FOR DECADES, IF THEN. PROPERTY TAXES PAY FOR SCHOOLS RIGHT? NO, THESE CORPORATIONS WILL SELECT WHICH SCHOOLS THEY WILL 'DONATE' TO. THEY WILL CONTROL YOUR SCHOOL'S FUTURE, NOT YOU........SAYS YOUR INCUMBENT.

City plans new bridge to handle traffic boost in Harbor Point
Baltimore Business Journal by James Briggs, Reporter Date: Thursday, August 9, 2012, 9:18am EDT - Last Modified: Thursday, August 9, 2012, 9:47am EDT

The Baltimore City Department of Transportation is moving ahead with plans to build a bridge that would extend Central Avenue to Harbor Point.

The city and Harbor East Development Group LLC want a new bridge to accommodate the increased traffic that is expected to come with the proposed 2.9 million square feet of new development, including a headquarters for Exelon Corp., at Harbor Point.

Harbor Point is a 27-acre waterfront site between Harbor East and Fells Point. The only way to reach the site from downtown is on South Caroline Street.

Living Classrooms, a nonprofit organization that uses waterfront sites and campuses around the harbor for educational purposes, had expressed concerns about losing access to some areas because of a new bridge.

But City Councilman James Kraft, whose district includes Harbor Point, said an agreement has been reached “that would not affect their ability to use the water down there.”

Officials at Living Classrooms could not be reached for comment.

Harbor East Development President Michael S. Beatty has said he wants a bridge in place by the time the Exelon (NYSE: EXC) headquarters is scheduled to open in 2014.

The DOT, which would handle bridge construction, has scheduled a community open house for 6 p.m. Aug. 29 at 1417 Thames St. to discuss the plan with area residents.

A new bridge would ease traffic beyond Harbor Point, Kraft said.

“If it’s done right, it will open up that [Interstate] 83 corridor and President Street corridor,” he said. “You have the traffic being able to come in Harbor Point and Harbor East down President Street and that can exit onto Central Avenue.”

The city is mulling multiple traffic patterns that could be created from the bridge, which would span from Lancaster Street to Harbor Point.

~
Construction likely will be paid for through a yet-to-be-passed tax-increment financing, or TIF, deal between the city and Harbor East Development. A TIF borrows against future property taxes to pay for infrastructure like roads and utilities.

“I got letters from community associations supporting the TIF, which is very unique,” Kraft said.

That’s at least in part due to the proposed bridge, which Kraft said “could be a great advantage to ... everyone who works in the greater Fells Point area.”

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